The Last Thing He Wanted

Didion, Joan

ISBN 10: 0679433317 / ISBN 13: 9780679433316

Published by Knopf, 1996

Fast & Free Shipping â Good condition. It may show normal signs of use, such as light writing, highlighting, or library markings, but all pages are intact and the book is fully readable. A solid, complete copy that's ready to enjoy. Seller Inventory # ZWV.0679433317.G

Synopsis:

This is a story that begins when Elena McMahon, estranged from her powerful husband in California and covering the 1984 primary campaign for the Washington Post, makes her way to Florida to see her father, Dick McMahon, who does deals.
Tracing Elena's fevered trajectory, the narrator makes it clear that this is her version of what happened, not the version offered by the F.B.I. interviews or by Senator Mark Berquist or by the late Ambassador-at-Large Treat Morrisson. What happens is a story that shifts quickly from Elena's well-mapped life expensive people and political fund-raisers to a journey without maps, an investigation into the randomness of history, into intentions spun out of control and gone wrong, arms dealing, covert action, assassination.
As connections are made between November 22, 1963, and Iran-Contra and Castro and Cuba, we begin to see what the narrator/author calls history's subtext.
Joan Didion has given us an exploration of menace and ellipsis charged with irony, exciting in its storytelling and intellectual reach - a story that clicks into place only in the final pages.

About the Author: Joan Didion was born in Sacramento, California. She has written four previous novels, five nonfiction books, and frequently contributes to The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Last Thing He Wanted
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: 1996
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: good