Story Circle Network

Austin Chapter
Reader's Guide

January 2007

The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion

Many will greet this taut, clear-eyed memoir of grief as a long-awaited return to the terrain of Didion's venerated, increasingly rare personal essays. The author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and 11 other works chronicles the year following the death of her husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, from a massive heart attack on December 30, 2003, while the couple's only daughter, Quintana, lay unconscious in a nearby hospital suffering from pneumonia and septic shock...

  1. The first time you read the first four sentences of the book (in italics), what did you think? What do you think now?

  2. Do you think Didion was writing from a perspective of self-pity? In what ways does she indulge that impulse, and in what ways does she deny it?

  3. The Judges' Citation for the National Book Award called this book "a masterpieces of investigative journalism." Why do you think they described it that way?

  4. What does the phrase "magical thinking" mean to you? Have you ever experienced anything like this, after a loss or some other life-changing occurrence? How did it help, or hinder, your healing?

  5. Throughout the book, Didion comes across mainly as "a cool customer," in spite of her obvious grief. How did her detached tone affect your reading experience?

  6. Throughout the book, Didion repeats sentences, times, or activities. For once in your life just let it go. We call it the widowmaker. I tell you that I shall not live two days. Life changes in the instant. What purpose do you think the repetition serves? How did your understanding of her grief change each time you read one of the phrases she repeats?

  7. Food appears in the book from the very beginning. What purpose do you think her frequent references to meals and eating out serves?

  8. What did you think when you read Didion's description of the tsunami toward the end of the book? What purpose did that image serve?

  9. Is there a turning point in the book? Where would you place it, and why?

  10. Didion is adapting this book into a one-woman Broadway show. How do you imagine its transition from page to stage? Would you want to see the play?

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