The Year of Magical Thinking

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ΓÇó NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER ΓÇó From one of AmericaΓÇÖs iconic writers,a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriageΓÇöand a lifein good times and badΓÇöthat will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. Several days before Christmas 2003John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughterQuintanafall ill with what seemed at first fluthen pneumoniathen complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days laterΓÇöthe night before New YearΓÇÖs EveΓÇöthe Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a secondthis closesymbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks latertheir daughter pulled through. Two months after thatarriving at LAXshe collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is DidionΓÇÖ s attempt to make sense of the ΓÇ£weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about deathabout illness … about marriage and children and memory … about the shallowness of sanityabout life itself.