what did you think of this book?
Added 2024-01-27 02:43:58 +0000 UTClet me know, what did you think of this book? I just finished it.
Comments
so... uh... "girl i cannot think" i accidentally deleted your comment I'm so sorry idk how to get it back but this was my response :/
shawn
2024-02-09 03:00:14 +0000 UTCIMO this is very different from her other work. even Blue Nights which is largely about the loss of her daughter feels very different, i think because she took several years before writing it and was able to process that grief, whereas this feels like she began writing it before John's body was cold...
shawn
2024-02-09 02:58:56 +0000 UTCso interesting to think about the book itself as a symptom of the disordered grief-addled brain and the 'magical' thinking she describes, it was not written removed enough from the event to be very retrospective in my opinion, but feels like a manifestation of her grief to add to the list of what she describes in the book (kinda meta) I thought the detached writing style stating the intense grief rather than trying to make us empathise through description demonstrates that super well I think some of the other commenters finding it overly self-indulgent and boring etc is because it doesn't feel like something made for the consumer market but rather something she wrote for herself that we are intruding on or interrupting almost like a diary entry and therefore portrays a thought process that isn't perfect, is self-indulgent etc - in times of intense grief and sadness, its hard to imagine didion thinking about how the average reader will respond to stuff like depictions of wealth (as we likely wouldn't if our lives were irrevocably changed in a similar way)
abby
2024-02-02 12:44:57 +0000 UTC
