Review by Rachel Syme When The Year of Magical Thinking appeared in 2005, it established Joan Didion as the high priestess of anointed grief counselors — her meticulous and minimalist memoir of losing her husband to heart failure hit a cultural and emotional chord that continues to reverberate. In Blue Nights, Didion’s new memoir, she turns to motherhood with a similar clinical detachment — again a shock, but in this case, one that feels much more uncomfortable. Didion’s gimlet eye is always welcome; the conclusions that she draws from it, maybe less so. Two months before Magical Thinking‘s publication, Didion’s 39-year-old adopted daughter, Quintana […]
