The Year of Magical Thinking
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The Year of Magical Thinking
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Narrated by:
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Barbara Caruso
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Written by:
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Joan Didion
About this listen
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.
©2005 Joan Didion (P)2005 HighBridge CompanyWhat the critics say
- 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)
What listeners say about The Year of Magical Thinking
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2022-01-19
Poignant
Joan Didion captures the secret that is grief. Unfortunately grief has become a social secret that you can only know once and until you’ve experienced it and she describes that very experience with grace and compassion. Her descriptions are helpful and validating.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Audra Lakatos
- 2024-04-05
Wonderful narrative on the feelings of grief
I loved this book. It was exceptionally well narrated, the cadence, the “magicalness” of music at the end of some chapters, the way the narrator brought to life the authors “voice”. A forthright (yet round about) narrative on grief, and finding your way through loss.
My experience with loss is a completely different situation but still I was able to relate and found it comforting in a way.
I appreciated and enjoyed the way it was written. I want to read Blue Nights now by the same author.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Andrew Steven
- 2024-07-17
It’s a lovely book with great narration
The performance is wonderful. I could listen to the reader forever. I enjoyed the book, but was happy it ended.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Pat O'Grady
- 2020-09-14
Not Necessarily What I'd Hoped For
The narration played a part in preventing me from enjoying this book as much as I'd expected to. While the narrator's voice is nice and clear, I think it would be more well suited to a child's storybook, because she seemed to inject a lot more emotion into segments of the book that, in my mind, would have made more sense in a dead-pan tone, to denote the process of moving painstakingly through the steps that follow a loss and grief process such as Joan's (as described by Joan herself).
As for the book itself, I don't know exactly what I'd hoped for. I think that the book is a deeply personal and fairly scattered account of the year following a loss. If so, I can appreciate it for what I think it was: an almost journalistic description her own grief and reflections, but it felt almost too intimate and over-detailed to have been released to the public. I think that if I'd begun the book with that understanding, I would have appreciated it and enjoyed it in a different way, however I came to this near the end and, therefore, it was often difficult to follow. Paired with the fact that audible doesn't offer the option to read along with the audio, I found my mind wandering almost as soon as I would begin listening to this book. I would have preferred to turn the pages myself.
This is the first book I've read by Joan Didion and it definitely leaves me wondering if her others are written in a similar style. Or if this one stands separate from her other work; almost as if this one was just for her. That I could understand.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- linda.brown
- 2022-03-21
Mesmerizing
Perhaps it was because I had lost two family members a week apart, one had lived a long life and the other, whose death was inevitable was still sudden in its timing. I was mesmerized by the vivid descriptions of love and loss and listened to this essay on love and life and loss in the dark late into the night. Such a gifted writer was Joan Didion, her husband was right about that all along.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Bruce Chapman
- 2020-02-25
Great writing
i read this book twenty years ago based on a recommendation of Didion's writings and enjoyed it very much.
I listened to it recently after my wife of nearly 50 years passed away. It had an even deeper impact on me. I can recommend it from both circumstances.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2020-10-14
Loved it!
My first Joan Didion book but already looking for another one. Great narration, perfect voice for this story. Bravo!
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2023-01-20
Not for me
Grief and trauma are widely relatable, but I couldn’t relate to her life in any other meaningful way.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Jonathan
- 2023-05-02
Not for me
No idea what this book’s benefit is to the reader. First wasted credit on audible.
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