The Year of Magical Thinking
By: Joan Didion
This story focuses on loss, death, and dying. The author’s husband dies suddenly, at the same time that their daughter is quite ill and is intubated in an ICU. Here is how the story begins:
“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.” Later she writes: grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.
This is not an easy or light read, but I think it’s well-written and thought-provoking.
