~Joan Didion

Joan Didion's new memoir Blue Nights weighs in at a slim 188 pages and can easily be read in one sitting. You could whip through it, but I'd suggest you allow her to snake charm you into a lull with her raw prose that pricks the reader deeply. The book, in elliptical fashion focuses on the death of her adopted daughter Quintana six years ago and a commentary on aging. You could call it a companion or follow-up to her memoir on grieving  her husband The Year of Magical Thinking but it's more about living and hope than of dying.

At 76, St. Joan as some call her, is an iron butterfly. Fragile as onion skin on the surface, she is at her core, a tough as nails survivor, cranking out words on a page as if her life depended on it. She once said,"The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream." How lovely to be fooled again with Blue Nights. She claims writing doesn't come as easily as it once did but I'm confident she'll keep writing until the end. But no more death memoirs, okay? I wrote about meeting her in this blog post.What Joan Didion Told Me
You can come to your own conclusion watching her read an excerpt from Blue Nights in a film by her nephew Griffin Dunne.