Didion's Year of Magical Thinking

This is the first and last audio book I will ever indulge in! No pages to dog-ear. No highlighting or underlining worthy phrases. No circling unknown words to look up. It takes forever to find a reference point. What was I thinking? Audio books are not the least bit suitable for the hardcore bibliophile! Regardless, once I was able to get past the whole lack of highlighting thing (or rather, .once 95 South bored me enough!) and I really listened to Didion attempt to mourn for and understand the death of her husband and severe illness of her daughter, I was able to get into it.

I didn't like the first part of the story; the husband dying part. Didion seemed rather removed from the situation, devoid of any emotional attachment whatsoever. At times, I wondered if she was talking about the death of someone she even knew. She seemed stoic and clinical about the whole thing. At this point, I identified more with the narrator, as though a fictional story were being told to me by a third party. As she progressed, however, more emotion surfaced. Her initial coolness was probably due to the shock she felt at the time, and if so, she conveyed this perfectly.

The story bounces around quite a bit. As one would convey one's life story in a face-to-face conversation, she tells the tale of their 40-year marriage in a broken fashion, jumping around time as memories surface. If this story were a film, for instance, it would be constant flashbacks. I'm curious now to see the video of the stage production starring Vanessa Redgrave, who tragically lost her daughter just yesterday to a freak skiing accident. I couldn't help but think how ironic it was that I had just finished this book about a woman who lost her husband and daughter and the star of the stage production just lost her daughter. There was a strange sense of connectedness. . .like I felt when I came across that autobiography of Simone DeBeauvoir, whom we just read about in my Jan intersession class, The Second Sex: French Women in Film and Literature. I had never heard of her before, and here we were, on vacation, a thousand miles from home, in a remote out-of-the-way used book store and there she was. . .but I digress. . .

I actually didn't know until further researching Didion's life that her daughter died 18 months after her father, just two months before this book was released. Didion considered revising it prior to release, but could not bring herself to complete the task. She stated that mourning for her daughter, in actuality a grown child with a husband of her own, is different than that of mourning a husband. The book, she felt, was complete as was.

The most touching and poignant parts of her story centered on their nuclear family. The traditions, the special phrases they shared (John always said to Quintana upon departing, "I love you more than one more day."), the intimate look inside a 40-year relationship, its quirks and rhythms. They were well-traveled and this proved the most challenging part of Didion's mourning process. Everywhere she went after John's death, there was a memory. Her mind, easily prompted by a place or object, would drift back in time to experiences, vacations, shared work, homes established and cared for. This kept John alive, but at the same time kept her stuck. She could not bring herself to get rid of his shoes because he might need them when he came back. By the end of the book, I felt I had journeyed with her through a trying and emotional year, hoping towards the end that she was able to let go, or as she stated, "let John stay dead."

Despite the beginning, the novel was filled with much emotion. I cannot imagine getting through this ordeal only to turn around and have to repeat it 18 months later through the loss of your only child. Unfathomable. Throughout the book, Didion, while visiting her daughter in various medical facilities, would whisper to her daughter, "You are safe. I am here." She works through this statement in a portion of the book, realizing that no mother can truly keep her child safe from all danger. I am sure that this thought process factored heavily in her mourning Quintana.

Overall, a good read. It is a thought-provoking look at the mourning process by a woman who must write to work through emotion. You can't read it without envisioning yourself in a similar situation and wondering how would I manage that? Would I be able to write about it? Would I be able to get up each day and breathe?