Click picture for link to NPR interview...
I just finished this book (bought at Kepler's last night) which won one of the big non-fiction book awards, and like Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" said, "I hated to read it and I loved to read it" at the same time.
Joan's husband died suddenly in Dec 2003 and this is her story of how she got through the year after that. I actually ended up identifying even more with her experiences of her daughter being sick, because it reminded me of when my mom was sick.
Although this really pushed a lot of emotional buttons for me, it was reassuring because I always thought magical thinking in terms of thinking "If I would have done something different or been different, it would have saved her" is something that mainly children experience (it always strikes me as sounding so wacky) ... but here is Joan Didion having the same thoughts.
I don't even remember consciously thinking that I could actually have done anything to save her (my mom, not Joan Didion :-)
as a 12 year old (when she got sick) and 16 year old (when she died), but my therapist says this is the root of much of this self-doubt, self-punishing that we do... we would be good people and deserving of (love, good jobs, etc) if we had been able to save this person that we loved.
So it was very reassuring that Joan Didion as a mature person was also going through things that happened before her husband died and trying to find ways that she screwed up by letting it happen.
And things like wanting to keep his shoes because unconsciously she wants him to be able to return.
Anyway, it is a very good book and it may bring up some stuff for you also but in the end I am very glad I read it. (And it's fairly short.)
