the little bird book review

When I heard that Joan Didion had written a new book, I was delighted. When I heard what it was about (her grief after losing her husband suddenly), I was even more delighted, for I did not see how a great subject like grief and loss could possibly go wrong in such great hands as Didion’s.

I was not disappointed.

It is a habit of mine to wait, however, before reading a much-anticipated new release by a favorite author, and I do not know why. Sometimes I’m merely waiting for the book to be released in paperback; other times, I purchase the book and then leave it on a shelf, for months or years - to age, I suppose, like cheese or wine - before deciding that the time is perfectly ripe for reading.

For example, I still have not read Ian McEwan’s new novel, though it has been noted in this blog (several times) how much I adore McEwan’s books.

That said, it took me a full year to purchase THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, and another few months of unobstructed ownership to finally pick the book up and turn back the cover. Within the first few pages, I began to cry.

How could I not? Didion’s rendering of her husband’s death sent my heart racing, my pulse beating wildly as hers must have done as she rode the elevator down to the ambulance, stunned, and though the book releases the reader, mercifully, from such a rapid pace after the first few segments, it never quite relents.

(My husband, hearing me sniffle, annouced that I was, in fact, “a glutton for punishment.” Possibly this is true - any book worth its salt makes me cry, either from joy, relief or anguish, and so it ought to be, I think. I tend to seek these books out, and I read MAGICAL THINKING immediately after Doris Lessing’s The Sweetest Lesson, which did make me spontaneously burst into tears right before I was called to sound check for a show.)

I enjoy reading an author’s work with a sense of chronology, comparing their earlier work with the later, and MAGICAL THINKING certainly measures up to the high standard set by Didion’s earlier books, such as Slouching Toward Bethlehem or Play It As It Lays. Her voice is clearly more mature, more seasoned (perhaps more this year than last) and her hand more practiced, and this shows in MAGICAL THINKING. It is a slender, beautiful book, as much about endurance as it is about sorrow.

RATING: 5