Blue Nights

A popular choice for book circles, readers may be most familiar with Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) which recounts the year following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne.  Her latest work, Blue Nights, turns to the death of Dunne and Didion’s only (adopted) child, Quintana Roo, which came only two year’s later.  Undoubtedly, Quintana’s death inspires, even drives Blue Nights--a metaphor Didion beautifully establishes in the work’s first chapter--then weaves throughout her most poignant memories of Quintana.  But to suggest that Blue Nights is a work solely about the death of Didion’s daughter is an oversimplification.  The larger impressions are those of fear and loss:  Didion inevitably turns inward, observing herself aging, and becoming increasingly alone, in a world not only without her husband, but now without her daughter.  Certainly not uplifting, but heartfelt, highly recommended reading.  There may be few memoirists whose prose and storytelling are as hauntingly poetic as Joan Didion’s.