The Year of Magical Thinking

The Year of Magical Thinking a memoir written by Joan Didion, a middle-aged woman from California was a unique, well written book, as well as a pleasure to read. Joan’s memoir was adapted into a play in the form of a monologue, but it is still in the form of any normal book. In the beginning pages of her memoir, Joan’s husband, John, dies, this event can alone be devastating, but John dies right before her eyes, only adding on to the tragedy. The rest of the book is about her coping with the inevitable loss of her husband. As she re-lives the year after John dies, she analyses her experience, and the focus on some particular emotional and physical aspects of her experience changes. Didion also finds herself believing that if she does certain things that are right, like doing John’s funeral and showing strength towards the situation, John will eventually come back.

            In addition to John’s loss, Didion also has to deal with her daughter, Quintana, who comes out of a coma after her father dies. Didion re-lives moments from Quintana’s childhood in which she remembers her daughter being closer to John than to her. Throughout the story she tries to avoid remembering those moments, she tries to avoid getting sucked into the “vertex” as she calls it, but again and again she succumbs to re-living those memories.

            The experience of grief and sorrow is a theme in Joan Didion’s book, even though there is not much raw emotion in the process of her coping with this situation. In one of her memories, she remembers a doctor talking about John’s health and how it could not last long. After analyzing a few key points of that specific memory, John may have known in advance about his health problems, and she could’ve made his remaining time more meaningful. Her past conversations with John also take new meaning as she relates them with the experience she is now going through. I find her way of coping with the grief this type of situation brings very interesting because it’s not like any other person would’ve done it. Normally, people get depressed for months, and won’t accept any help from anyone, but Joan Didion doesn’t show almost any raw emotion, and she doesn’t give up on life. She is able to get through the moments of grief with magical thinking, something people don’t use normally for situations like these.

            Deeper into the story, Didion reaches new levels of grief due to Quintana’s health problems, which later on result in her death. Didion explains that she didn’t want the year after they died to go. At first I thought of it as if she didn’t want to accept the fact that they were gone, but she kept herself in a year of magical thinking. In anthropology, magical thinking is when a person thinks that when hoping for something enough or doing the right actions, an unavoidable event can be averted; thus the title of the book, The Year of Magical Thinking is the year after John and Quintana die and Joan carries on thinking that “if” she follows the right procedure, she can bring them back. “For once in your life just let it go” (60). This is something John told Didion back in the days when Quintana was a child. I found myself repeating this over and over in my head because Joan actually never lets anything go. It’s one of the lines that stuck to my head because they meant much more in this story. Throughout the book Joan complains that she isn’t the one who must let go, but after analyzing for one year, she finally does let go of her year of magical thinking and continues with her life.

            I found this book very interesting. The theme, the author’s experience, her way of dealing with the experience, and the book itself is a life-changing occurrence. After reading from Joan’s point of view, loss of a loved person is very devastating, and it’s extremely hard to deal with it and still keep calm and sane. I never really thought about how my grandmother feels about her husband’s death, but after reading this memoir, I feel admiration towards her. Joan Didion totally changed my view about dealing with these situations. I loved the whole book actually, all the lines were excellent, but I really liked the one I talked about before, when John tells her that she never lets go of things in her life. I could make a connection with John and the line, as I read on, I felt like I was John telling her this. Anyway, it was such an experience itself to read the book. It’s very amazing how 62 pages can have such an impact in your life. Although it’s not an easy book, because it requires profound analyzing, I recommend this book to anyone who likes the memoir genre.