http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781400043149-5 - This is Didion's memoir of the year following the sudden death of her husband of 40 years. During the year of coping with her immense loss, Didion's daughter is also suffering from a long-term illness that keeps her in and out of the hospital. I knew going in what this book was about, but I was hit immediately with an overwhelming sense of grief - and by page 50 I was in tears. Didion's writing is straight-forward - almost colloquial in nature that it seems like it would be so easy to replicate. Yet, she is able to convey simply the complexity of her emotions in a way that I don't think many people, even those who have sustained similar losses, could do. This book is filled with tremendous heartache - so I hesitate to recommend it to anyone. It doesn't contain strategies for dealing with death or a panacea for eliminating sadness. It's just a raw tribute to the emptiness that remains when we lose someone we love.
(* - winner 2005 National Book Award for Non-Fiction)
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