This book was published late 2005; I was able to read it only this year. People always talk about brutal honesty – this book is brutal, searing, frightening, almost painful to read. In one article I read, Sylvia Plath’s daughter, Frieda, said she’s ashamed of her “very, very strong” need for a mother, evident in her poetry. It does open a weakness, Frieda said. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion does not only admit to this “weakness” (her very, very strong need for her husband, her daughter, normalcy) – she dissects it, connects it to existing literature, questions it, rejects it, accepts it.
Read an excerpt here.
Eliza Victoria 