#abookishrendezvousreview - “Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.” ———————————— In December 2003, on Christmas Day, Joan Didion’s daughter Quintana Roo Dunne was admitted to the ICU - she had developed pneumonia which went on to cause septic shock. Five days later, John Gregory Dunne, her husband died suddenly of a massive cardiac arrest at the dinner table. And life as Joan knew it, abruptly came to an end. ———————————— The Year Of Magical Thinking is a heart and gut wrenching memoir of personal loss, illness and the grief. An unflinching forthright memoir of the mental, physical and emotional turmoil that Joan went through following John’s death and the prolonged illness of her daughter. Her day- to-day attempts to survive which finally led to the dawning of the fact that John would never come back - her very soul is bared between the pages. Even in the midst of sadness, her literary skill is par excellence. She draws you in from the very first word; you find yourself journeying with her through the darkest time of her life. I was in tears towards the end of the book. The Year Of Magical Thinking has some very poignant passages but the lines that touched me the most were, “...I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead...”. My book of the year. Highly recommended. ____________________________ #abookishrendezvousrating - 5/5 ____________________________ #bookstagram #booksofig #theyearofmagicalthinking #joandidion #vintageinternational #lovetoread #bookreadinggal #literaturejunkie #readingissexy #readingisfun #bookishhygge #bookishallure #bookworm #booknerd #bookporn #frommycollection #thesimplejoysoflife #whatcouldbebetter (at Mumbai, Maharastra)
