All About Books discussion

Week Two's book is The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

Here's a link to the article in the Observer:
http://gu.com/p/4g7ev?CMP=Share_iOSAp...

I have heard of this title but didn't know much about it. The article was a good introduction I think.

Has anyone here read it?

I have and liked it very much. It's a very personal book, yet it has all the qualities that make her such a brilliant essayist as well (I haven't yet tried her novels) : a crystal clear intellect and an ability to carefully observe. She always struck me as the 'warmer' Susan Sontag. Even more than this one I liked (loved actually) her We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction

Never herad of it; sounds interesting but I've seen how non-fiction is much harder to find in Italy - if you don't want to buy it full price!!!

Jenny wrote: "I have and liked it very much. It's a very personal book, yet it has all the qualities that make her such a brilliant essayist as well (I haven't yet tried her novels) : a crystal clear intellect a..."

We Tell Ourselves is on my bedside table :)

She hit all the marks and got it all right in Magical Thinking.

Joyce Carol Oates lost her husband around the same time A Widow's Story. I much preferred Ms. Didion's book, but I accept that I am a tad biased.

Interesting article. I read the book a couple of years ago. I do wonder to what extent the book was lauded because it was written by such an author. The reason I'm saying that is because, some years before at a time of personal loss, I read Letter to a Younger Son. This is written by someone to their younger son, following the sudden death of their older son. It's not written by anyone well known, but its language and grief are as searingly beautiful, if not more so, than that of Didion, in my opinion. (I've not got it with me, I'll add a quote from it next week).

Any back to Didion. I've also read Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which I thought was very good. I like your comparison with Susan Sontag, Jenny, whose writing I much prefer. I'm sure she'll appear in this 100 books list at some stage!

I think it definitely received more attention than it might have otherwise Gill, whether it's been overly lauded because of the name attached I can't really judge.
Looking forward to the quote from the book you've mentioned Gill.

Jenny, I don't know how many tilmes I have dithered about reading The Volcano Lover: A Romance by Susan Sontag. Can you help me decide?

Chrissie, I have never actually read a novel by her, only her essays and journals. Maybe Gill has? It certainly sounds really interesting!

This one has been on my radar, but I've never felt impelled to pick it up. I like the other book suggestions above though!

Jenny, someday I will have to try Sontag.

Pink, the topic of this just never appealed to me either.

Yes and I like sad, depressing books. Perhaps because I've never been married, it's not the sort of grief that I feel I can connect with. Although I don't think grief is something that I particularly want to read about anyway.

Pink, you know I like them too, the sad and depressing books. You are going to like dostoyevsky.........

Chrissie wrote: "Pink, you know I like them too, the sad and depressing books. You are going to like dostoyevsky........."

Oh good!

I've had a look back at Letter to a Younger Son. I still find it incredibly moving. Here's a quote relating to a couple of days after the son had died suddenly, following an asthma attack:

" The time between his death and the results of the post-mortem was like a landscape visited by a slow-moving, fluctuating mist, settling in the hollows of our days, thickening so that many hours were spent blindly - tasks performed automatically because they had to be done - and then the mist would clear abruptly, and the fact would appear again and have to be faced again: that, not thirty miles away, in a sterile room with successful suicides and the carnage of road accidents for silent company, lay the as yet unmarked body of a person we, and life, had shaped for the past eleven years."

And near the end, there's a fantastic part about death, and how we can react to it. Here's part of it (the 'it' in the first sentence refers to death):

"And yet it can enrich us. We can live for those who have gone. We can pack into our lives that extra time the dead have given us. For they have given us time: the expanded moment that comes when we realised that, for us, the blood still moves; the world is still there to be explored and made over; that, for now, this minute, this hour, this day, we are free of pain and hunger; that, though we still mourn in the deepest part of our being, death has liberated us, has made us see the transitory nature of everything; and life, being transitory, is thus infinitely more precious; commanding more attention than ever we gave it when we went on our way, still unthinking children, before death opened our minds, sharpened our eyes; and set us free."

Gill, thank you for sharing these. Those quotes are utterly beautiful.

Jenny wrote: "Gill, thank you for sharing these. Those quotes are utterly beautiful."

Thanks, Jenny. As good as, if not better than, Didion I think.

I gave this a try and I didn't particularly like it, but for completely different reasons than I expected. My review is here if anyone wants to read why I didn't like it.