Research Catalog

Title

The year of magical thinking / Joan Didion.

Author

Didion, Joan

Publication

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

227 pages; 21 cm.

Summary

[In this book, the author] explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage - and a life, in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later - the night before New Year's Eve - the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This ... book is Didion's attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."--Jacket.

Subject

• Didion, Joan
• Dunne, John Gregory, 1932-2003 > Death and burial
• Didion, Joan > Marriage
• Didion, Joan > Family
• Dunne, John Gregory > 1932-2003 > Death and burial
• Dunne, John Gregory, 1932-2003
• Didion, Joan 1934-2021
• Dunne, John Gregory 1932-2003
• Čubrilović Familie : 19. Jh.-
• DIDION, JOAN 2 NOVELISTS, AMERICAN>20TH CENTURY>FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS. 3. DUNNE, JOHN GREGORY, active 1932>DEATH AND BURIAL. 4. NOVELISTS, AMERICAN>20TH century>BIOGRAPHY. 5. JOURNALISTS>UNITED STATES>BIOGRAPHY. 6. MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS>UNITED STATES. 7. WIDOWS>UNITED STATES>BIOGRAPHY. 8. DIDION, JOAN>MARRIAGE. 9 DIDION, JOAN>FAMILY. 10. LOSS(PSYCHOLOGY) 11. GRIEF. 1 TITLE
• Didion, Joan
• Dunne, John Gregory
• 1900-1999
• Novelists, American > 20th century > Family relationships
• Novelists, American > 20th century > Biography
• Journalists > United States > Biography
• Mothers and daughters > United States
• Widows > United States > Biography
• Loss (Psychology)
• Grief
• Mothers
• Mothers and daughters > United States
• Romanciers américains > 20e siècle > Relations familiales
• Romanciers américains > 20e siècle > Biographies
• Journalistes > États-Unis > Biographies
• Mères et filles > États-Unis
• Veuves > États-Unis > Biographies
• Perte (Psychologie)
• Chagrin
• Mères
• grief
• mothers
• Families
• Journalists
• Marriage
• Mothers and daughters
• Novelists, American
• Novelists, American > Family relationships
• Widows
• Ehe
• Rouw
• Verlies (psychologie)
• United States
• Book group discussion kits

Genre/Form

• Autobiography.
• Biography
• Paperback.
• Autobiographies
• Biographies
• Autobiographies.
• Biographies.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Awards (note)

• National Book Award, Nonfiction, 2005.

ISBN

• 140004314X
• 9781400043149
• 0739469673
• 9780739469675
• 9781400078431
• 1400078431

LCCN

2005045132

OCLC

• 58563131
• SCSB-9986752

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library