The Year of Magical Thinking Audiobook By Joan Didion cover art

The Year of Magical Thinking

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The Year of Magical Thinking

By: Joan Didion
Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
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National Book Award, Nonfiction, 2005

"Life changes fast....You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly 40 years.

The weeks and months that followed "cut loose any fixed idea I had about death, about illness, about probability and luck...about marriage and children and memory...about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion explores with electric honesty and passion a private yet universal experience. Her portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad, will speak directly to anyone who has ever loved a husband, a wife, or a child.

Listen to Joan Didion's full-hour interview with Charlie Rose.©2005 Joan Didion (P)2005 HighBridge Company Art & Literature Authors Biographies & Memoirs Grief & Loss Memoir Essentials Mental Health Awareness National Book Award Personal Development Women Marriage Inspiring Thought-Provoking Heartfelt Grief Motherhood

Critic reviews

  • 2005 Audie Award Nominee, Biography/Memoir
  • National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee, Autobiography, 2005

"Many will greet this taut, clear-eyed memoir of grief as a long-awaited return to the terrain of Didion's venerated, increasingly rare personal essays....This is an indispensable addition to Didion's body of work and a lyrical, disciplined entry in the annals of mourning literature." (Publishers Weekly)
"The Year of Magical Thinking is not a downer. On the contrary. Though the material is literally terrible, the writing is exhilarating and what unfolds resembles an adventure narrative." (The New York Times)

Featured Article: The top 100 memoirs of all time


All genres considered, the memoir is among the most difficult and complex for a writer to pull off. After all, giving voice to your own lived experience and recounting deeply painful or uncomfortable memories in a way that still engages and entertains is a remarkable feat. These autobiographies, often narrated by the authors themselves, shine with raw, unfiltered emotion sure to resonate with any listener. But don't just take our word for it—queue up any one of these listens, and you'll hear exactly what we mean.

Featured Article The top 100 memoirs of all time
Raw Honesty • Beautiful Writing • Perfect Narration • Insightful Grief Portrayal • Thoughtful Reflections

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This is one of the most elegant and finely crafted pieces of writing I have read in a very long time. Her prose is fashioned with the equivalent seeming ease and beauty of Renee Flemming and the captivating power of Michelangelo. While my recent loss is a series of heart attacks and and a related divorce I could still groan at the poignant ache the "little things" inflame.. I cried, laughed and did both at the same time. Thank you Ms. Didion.

Elegance

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Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced us to loss of life in "On Death and Dying" years ago. Her insights have carried us a long way since that time. Now, Joan Didion tells us what it was like to experience the loss of her husband while her only child was lying in a coma. She has put her expert pen to helping us participate in her grief.

There are some books that I prefer in print because of the written word. I couldn't imagine listening to Swann's Way for example. This is the first time I have listened to Didion's work and I was not disappointed. Her insights are valuable, her prose crisp and cutting as in all of her essays. Her writting listens well in this format.

A Companion to Kubler-Ross

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A heartbreaking, breathtaking and inspiring journey into the very depths of this beautiful person's heart and soul. A profoundly brave and powerful story of loss and living. Thank you Ms Didion

Astounding

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I listened to this in the year in which my best friend was kidnapped and murdered, my mother got sick and passed away, and my husband and I celebrated our 31st anniversary. And the year before, my husband had been seriously injured in a car accident. Thus, the book was, for me, cause for much reflection and more than a bit of catharsis. Very well written, as you would expect from Didion, and very movingly, if understatedly, narrated - in fact, moving in its understatedness, almost soothing. Life happens, death happens, the wheel goes round and round.

Reflection

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And love this book. Put off reading it for a long time but so glad I finally did. Crystalline prose and incisive perceptions.

Love Joan Didion

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Well written, but what was she going on about? The stream of conscious rambling never arrived at a moral or conclusion. Not that one is necessary for a novel. I still wanted to feel a connection with the author. No connection, no catharsis, no enlightenment, just a lot of noise in a little echo chamber.

Overrated

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That’s it. That’s my review. It changed my life and made me feel deeply seen. It helped me deal with the grief illiteracy I was drowning in.

Highly Recommend to ANYONE in the Tornado of Grief

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I love the way she writes: her metaphors and her voice. I recommend this for anyone experiencing loss- the ending is magical.

Loved

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As a event widow this book made a lot of sense
No one expects the fear and bewilderment that follows a death of your husband but knowing that what you are feeling is to be expected helps
.

Very helpful and realistic

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An amazing narrative by Joan Didion and the process of grief on her husbands dead. It literally make me change the way I live my life.

The only flaw is the horrible music at the end of each chapter. It totally screws up the narration and the felling of the text.

A life changer.

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