Blue Nights

Starred review from September 12, 2011
Loss has pursued author Didion relentlessly, and in this subtly crushing memoir about the untimely death of her daughter, Quintana Roo (1966–2005), coming on the heels of The Year of Magical Thinking, which chronicled the sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, Didion again turns face forward to the harsh truth. “When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children,” she writes, groping her way backward through painful memories of Quintana Roo’s life, from her recent marriage in 2003 to adorable moments of childhood moving about California in the 1970s with her worldly parents and learning early on cues about how to grow up fast. While her parents were writing books, working on location for movies, and staying in fancy hotels, Quintana Roo developed “depths and shallows,” as her mother depicts in her elliptically dark fashion, later diagnosed as “borderline personality disorder”; while Didion does not specify what exactly caused Quintana’s repeated hospitalizations and coma at the end of her life, the author seems to suggest it was a kind of death wish, about which Didion feels guilt, not having heeded the signs early enough. Her own health—she writes at age 75—is increasingly frail, and she is obsessed with falling down and being an invalid. Yet Didion continually demonstrates her keen survival instincts, and her writing is, as ever, truculent and mesmerizing, scrutinizing herself as mercilessly as she stares down death.

Starred review from April 15, 2011

Didion (We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction, 2006, etc.) delivers a second masterpiece on grief, considering both her daughter's death and her inevitable own.

In her 2005 book, The Year of Magical Thinking, the much-decorated journalist laid bare her emotions following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. The same year that book was published, she also lost her adopted daughter, Quintana Roo, after a long hospitalization. Like Magical Thinking, this book is constructed out of close studies of particular memories and bits of medical lingo. Didion tests Quintana's childhood poems and scribblings for hints of her own failings as a mother, and she voices her helplessness at the hands of doctors. "I put the word 'diagnosis' in quotes because I have not yet seen that case in which a 'diagnosis' led to a 'cure,' " she writes. The author also ponders her own mortality, and she does so with heartbreaking specificity. A metal folding chair, as she describes it, is practically weaponized, ready to do her harm should she fall out of it; a fainting spell leaves her bleeding and helpless on the floor of her bedroom. Didion's clipped, recursive sentences initially make the book feel arid and emotionally distant. But she's profoundly aware of tone and style—a digression about novel-writing reveals her deep concern for the music sentences make—and the chapters become increasingly freighted with sorrow without displaying sentimentality. The book feels like an epitaph for both her daughter and herself, as she considers how much aging has demolished her preconceptions about growing old.

A slim, somber classic.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2011

In December 2003, Didion's husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, died of a heart attack while only daughter Quintana Roo lay hospitalized with a bout of pneumonia that had led to septic shock. Quintana recovered to attend the services but died of a hematoma in 2005, even as her mother was promoting The Year of Magical Thinking, a brave and determinedly dry-eyed look at mourning a spouse. Here, Didion focuses on her daughter, recalling Quintana's life while asking herself the questions parents inevitably ask about what they did wrong and what important clues they missed. The book opens on July 26, 2010, Quintana's wedding anniversary, during those "blue" summer hours when the sun can't quite set. Essential reading for anyone who has ever mourned, has fretted as a parent, or simply loves good writing--that is, nearly all of us. With a 200,000-copy first printing and a five-city tour.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2011
Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), her chronicle of grief following the abrupt death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, evoked a powerful response from a widely diverse readership and won the National Book Award. Left untold was the story of the life and death of Dunne and Didion's daughter, Quintana Roo, the subject of this scalpel-sharp memoir of motherhood and loss. Didion looks to blue nightssummer evenings when the twilights turn long and blue only to herald the dying of the brightnessto define the dark limbo she's endured since August 2005, when Quintana Roo, 39, died after nearly two years of harrowing medical crises and complications. Didion looks back to her own peripatetic childhood, her and Dunne's life as world-traveling Hollywood screenwriters, and their spontaneously arranged private adoption of their newborn daughter. As Didion portrays Quintana Roo as a smart and stoic girl given to quicksilver mood changes, she parses the conundrums of adoption and chastises herself for maternal failings. Now coping with not only grief and regret but also illness and age, Didion is courageous in both her candor and artistry, ensuring that this infinitely sad yet beguiling book of distilled reflections and remembrance is graceful and illuminating in its blue musings. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A 200,000 first printing and national tour are planned for this second intimate memoir in light of the tremendous response to Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (2005).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

January 30, 2012
Kimberly Farr turns in a solid performance in this audio edition of Didion’s haunting memoir of her daughter Quintana Roo’s illness and death. The book is a sequel of sorts to Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking—about the unexpected death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne—and this previous work haunts Blue Nights and helps to guide Farr’s narration. A younger woman than the author, Farr’s reading often lacks the mournful quality of the text: her narration is simply perkier than Didion’s prose. And while Farr does justice to the author’s story—using the elongation of precisely chosen words to indicate untapped reservoirs of emotion—there are times when the reading takes on a tone more appropriate to a less rigorous story of uplift through death. A Knopf hardcover.

September 15, 2011

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion wrote about her reaction to the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Here she addresses the death shortly thereafter of her 39-year-old daughter, Quintana, who died of complications from pneumonia. Adopted at birth and apprised of this at a young age, Quintana had feelings of abandonment her entire life. Didion wonders here whether her handling of her daughter's early years contributed to those feelings and generally questions her suitability as a parent. At the same time, she discusses her own attempts to cope with aging and the onset of frailty. Didion's spare style of writing gets right to the point. She ponders Quintana's utterances and writings to try to better understand her and how she herself might have responded differently, but ultimately, there are no answers. VERDICT This worthwhile meditation on parenting and aging by a succinct writer, while at times difficult to read and a bit self-centered, is well worth the emotional toll. [See Prepub Alert, 5/2/11.]--Gina Kaiser, Univ. of the Sciences Lib., Philadelphia

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2011

Didion (We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction, 2006, etc.) delivers a second masterpiece on grief, considering both her daughter's death and her inevitable own.

In her 2005 book, The Year of Magical Thinking, the much-decorated journalist laid bare her emotions following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. The same year that book was published, she also lost her adopted daughter, Quintana Roo, after a long hospitalization. Like Magical Thinking, this book is constructed out of close studies of particular memories and bits of medical lingo. Didion tests Quintana's childhood poems and scribblings for hints of her own failings as a mother, and she voices her helplessness at the hands of doctors. "I put the word 'diagnosis' in quotes because I have not yet seen that case in which a 'diagnosis' led to a 'cure, ' " she writes. The author also ponders her own mortality, and she does so with heartbreaking specificity. A metal folding chair, as she describes it, is practically weaponized, ready to do her harm should she fall out of it; a fainting spell leaves her bleeding and helpless on the floor of her bedroom. Didion's clipped, recursive sentences initially make the book feel arid and emotionally distant. But she's profoundly aware of tone and style--a digression about novel-writing reveals her deep concern for the music sentences make--and the chapters become increasingly freighted with sorrow without displaying sentimentality. The book feels like an epitaph for both her daughter and herself, as she considers how much aging has demolished her preconceptions about growing old.

A slim, somber classic.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)