The Year of Magical Thinking

A luminous meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile threads of life.

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion chronicles the year that followed the sudden death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, and the near loss of their only daughter, Quintana. With unflinching clarity and profound emotional precision, she captures the shock of loss, the surreal disorientation of mourning, and the strange logic the mind creates to survive the unimaginable.

This is not only a memoir of grief but also a portrait of a remarkable marriage—forty years of shared language, rhythm, and intimacy—told in Didion’s iconic, razor-sharp prose. Interweaving personal experience with literary, medical, and psychological reflection, Didion gives voice to what so many endure but struggle to articulate.

Unsentimental and unforgettable, The Year of Magical Thinking is a testament to love, resilience, and the strange alchemy of sorrow.