"Blue Nights," by Joan Didion

Before I began this blog, I read Joan Didion’s remarkable story of the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne, and of her own response to that loss; Dunne died the same day my father did, and “The Year of Magical Thinking” spoke to me with great force, as it did to many others. I had read Didion’s work since the 1970s, and when I re-read “Play It As It Lays” recently, I wrote about it here (3/23/11). I recently read a fascinating New York magazine article on Didion and her new book, “Blue Nights” (Knopf, 2011), which is about the untimely death of her daughter, her only child, Quintana Roo; I wrote about the article's points on 10/26/11. Now I have read “Blue Nights” myself; I found it as powerful and moving as “The Year of Magical Thinking,” perhaps even more moving, because surely the death of a child is even more of a blow than the death of a husband. Didion seems utterly bereft, staggering from these two great blows, yet still finds that writing is the only way to cope with her losses. She is always controlled in her writing, yet very open in sharing her feelings, her self-doubts, her vulnerability. She wonders if she did something wrong in raising Quintana. She writes on her daughter’s childhood, obsessively returning to certain times, certain scenes. She writes of her own aging, illness and feelings of helplessness and loneliness. But she doesn’t ask for pity; she is never maudlin. As always, her writing is spare, strong, and compelling. I was afraid that reading this book would be painful, and indeed it was, but I am glad I read it. Her prose lays bare an elemental human experience, and she writes about death, loss, life, weakness, memory, and much more in her own inimitable way.