Joan Didion

I heard her talking about the book on NPR's "Fresh Air" show. It sounds like an excellent memoir -- as far as how it is written and the level of self-reflection and self-revelation.

But I honestly don't think I could read it. It was still so soon after the death of her husband when she wrote it; and her daughter dies before she finished the book. That kind of grief is a real part of life that in one way or another we will probably all have to face. But I can't see myself voluntarily wading into it.

I've just started reading it. In chapter 1, Didion says, "This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks, then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probablility and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."

Wow, huh?

"...the shallowness of sanity..."

Yeah, that's what I mean about excellent writing. Thanks for that excerpt, Cassie.