Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) is the author's memoir of the first year following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in December of 2003. The book chronicle's Didion's experience coming to terms with Dunne's death and dealing with grief, all while tending to her severely ill adult daughter, Quintana Roo, who was hospitalized with septic shock at the time that Dunne died. Didion combines her personal narrative with references to other works of literature and psychology, as well as medical texts, to explore what it means to grieve--an act which, she argues, goes beyond simply feeling sad.
The Year of Magical Thinking was the winner of the National Book Award...
