Review: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is so difficult for me. I know this is in many ways seen as a classic memoir that is beloved by many. And I did like it but I didn’t connect with it quite enough to love it. It’s a strange trip to read this book – the journey through grief with someone who can WRITE. There is a lot about what grief is and how it happens to people. But there are also really interesting memories explored by Didion in this one. I can understand why it is beloved but it never quite got there for me. It felt like a very honest look at grief and memory, one that didn’t feel sad or depressing. There was hope in much of this one. There is a lot of pain and sorrow but I didn’t feel as if there was that lost in sorrow feeling in this one. It’s definitely a beautifully told story of the pain of loss and how each of us deals with it in our own individual way. I think it made me think about grief in interesting ways and made me think about my own responses to grief in the past. I do recommend it but I didn’t quite love it.