Synopsis
The Year of Magical Thinking - Fourth Estate 25th anniversary edition by Joan Didion
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.
From one of America's iconic writers, this is a portrait of a marriage and a life - in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. This is a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill.
At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then complete sceptic 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 suffered a massive and fatal coronary.
In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of 40 years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LA airport, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Centre 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'. The result is an exploration of an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad.
Reviews
'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
About the Author
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Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York. She is the author of five novels and seven previous books of non-fiction: Where I Was From, Political Fictions, The Last Thing He Wanted, After Henry, Miami, Democracy, Salvador, The White Album, A Book of Common Prayer, Play It as It Lays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and Run River.
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Biography / Autobiog
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