The Year of Magical Thinking
By: Joan Didion / Narrated By: Vanessa Redgrave
Length: 1 hr and 28 mins
FanTAStic and, thankfully, not as devastating as the print version
Once upon a time, my husband worked at a bookstore… oh how I LOVED those days. Therefore, when a good friend’s husband died, I could ask him to pick up Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking right quick so that I might get it to her ASAP.
I decided to read through it first and thank GOD I did!!! Oh holy cow: This book is soooo devastating it woulda had my friend with a noose around her neck in a heartbeat.
Which is not to say that it’s bad or anything—it’s just that the grief is absolutely relentless and to say that Didion had a godawfully horrific stint of time there is a gross understatement. It starts with the death of her husband, goes through the illness of her daughter, her eventual and oh so sudden passing and, well, it just never lets up. Didion spends much time in that state of grief we’ve all been in (Well, those of us who are sad initiates to the What Do I Do Now with All This Love? Club), thinking thoughts constantly, being ambushed by them, being tossed hither and thither by emotions that creep up or scream out.
One thing that made it soooo DEVastating, I think now, after listening to it as an audiobook, is the absolute belief she seems to have that grief is a diseased limb, that a faint semblance of wholeness comes when one is able to let the dead stay dead, instead of the magical: If I only do this, s/he will be right there again.
This woulda killed my poor friend… And it kinda sorta would kill me…
Vanessa Redgrave, however, adds soooo much warmth to the confusion that Didion relates to us (And can she knock an American accent outta the park, or what?!); she makes this such a human/humane book, filled with warmth and aching to hold those lost in her arms just one more time; to be able to assure a daughter that: Mommy will keep you safe… even as jaws of death make this so very NOT a possibility. Death has its way with Life, and Redgrave seems torn asunder (Rather than as shocked and angry as Didion seems in print). The parts where I, currently, disagree most with Didion are made touching and something my mind can grasp the way Redgrave narrates each pain-dense line.
Cuz see: I totally believe that energy is constant and that those who’ve left me in this life are not even just a breath away but are surrounding me, on my skin, in my body, warming my soul. So I comPLETEly see the devastation that is chronicled in The Year of Magical Thinking; it’s just that I don’t believe that a “return” to wholeness comes when we can make the dead be dead. I kinda sorta feel that we have two hands: Where we can hold tightly two enTIREly different realities.
But that’s just me, and if you want a truly heartbreaking look at the shock and sorrow that comes with death, and if you want it gorgeously narrated—sounding like a person brought to her knees by soul-crushing grief—oh do listen to this one-woman play.
Just be gentle with yourself when it comes to grieving. Make room in your heart not for letting go but for embracing and letting yet another passed love in to live there.
And by the way? I did NOT give the book to my friend, but way later, after all the condolence cards had been given, after all went back to their lives, I sent her roses… turns out they were delivered on their wedding Anniversary and he always sent her roses on that day…
…I don’t believe in coincidences…
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