The Year of Magical Thinking - Hardcover

Didion, Joan

3.93

242,338 ratings by Goodreads

9780007308828: The Year of Magical Thinking

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007308825 ISBN 13: 9780007308828

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2009

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‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ is one of five classic Fourth Estate books to be released as numbered, collectable editions to mark the 25th anniversary. The books will be beautifully produced hardbacks, limited to 2000 copies each, with jackets designed by some of the finest artists at work today.

Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later – the night before New Year’s Eve – the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion's ‘attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness...about marriage and children and memory...about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself’.

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Review:

‘It is the most awesome performance of both participating in, and watching, an event. Even though Didion does not allow herself to break down, only a terribly controlled reader will resist doing the same.’ Independent

‘Ultimately, and unexpectedly for a book about illness and death, this is a wonderfully life-affirming book.’ Observer

‘Searing, informative and affecting. Don’t leave life without it.’ Financial Times

‘This is a beautiful and devastating book by one of the finest writers we have. Didion has always been a precise, humane and meticulously truthful writer, but on the subject of death she becomes essential.’ Zadie Smith

‘Taking the reader to places where they would not otherwise go is one of the things a really good book can do. “The Year of Magical Thinking” does just that, and brilliantly. Powerful, moving and true.’ Spectator

‘A great book, a great work. Angular, exact, pressured and tough, precise as a diamond drill bit.’ Nick Laird

From the Publisher:

The cover design is a limited edition print (1 of 2000) by Bob Crowley.

Bob Crowley is an award-winning theatre director, scenic and costume designer. He has worked extensively on Broadway and at The Royal National Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK. He was the designer for the stage adaptation of The Year of Magical Thinking.

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