Blog this item

Blue Nights

By Joan Didion

(9)

| Others | 9780307700513

Like Blue Nights?
Join aNobii to see if your friends read it, and discover similar books!

Book Description

Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion ...

Critics

Things Fall Apart: Joan Didion's 'Blue Nights'

In 1968, Joan Didion published a book of essays entitled Slouching Towards Bethlehem. In “A Preface”, she wrote: “This book is called Slouching Towards Bethlehem because for several years now certain lines from the Yeats poem have reverberated in my ... (read full critics)

popmatters published on Wed, 30 Nov 2011

Blue Nights by Joan Didion: review

Tragedy is a word lightly used by journalists to describe a range of experiences, from minor inconvenience to preposterous catastrophe. But there is something epic about the scale of Joan Didion’s misfortune. Blue Nights by Joan Didion Didion’s memoi ... (read full critics)

telegraph.co.uk published on Tue, 15 Nov 2011

See all critics

1 Review

1 person find this helpful

I had two contrary reactions while reading this book. The first: this is all just too private for publication. Didion, a sad, frail woman, grieving for all her lost friends and especially for her husband and daughter, feels compelled to torment herself with a detailed analysis of all the occasions ... (continue)

I had two contrary reactions while reading this book. The first: this is all just too private for publication. Didion, a sad, frail woman, grieving for all her lost friends and especially for her husband and daughter, feels compelled to torment herself with a detailed analysis of all the occasions when she may have failed as a parent, all the occasions when she missed what her daughter was trying to tell her. Each memento or photograph which she describes becomes an occasion for another lash of the whip. The reader is screaming "stop" by half way through. Children survive in spite of, not because of, their parents. There are no perfect parents. My second reaction: this is just too beautiful not to be published. She may feel that her writing style has become diminished with age but i found it still quite remarkable. Her efforts at being searingly honest with herself are also impressive, accompanied as they are by her seeming ignorance of the more basic difficulties of most people's lives. I'm glad I read this elegant testament.

Is this helpful?

Top of the pile said on Feb 22, 2012 | Add your feedback