THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion (2005)

Read by . . : Barbara Caruso
Publisher . : Highbridge Audio (2005)
ISBN . . . .: 9781598870053 | 159887005X
Format . . .: MP3.  41 tracks, 198 MB
Bitrate . . : ~85 kbps (iTunes 9, VBR, Mono, 44.1 kHz)
Source . . .: 4 CDs (5.25 hours)
Genre . . . : Non-fiction, Biography/Autobiography, Mourning
Unabridged .: Unabridged

Nicely tagged and labeled, combined ~half of the CD tracks, cover scan included. 
National Book Award 2005

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Cheers, FerraBit
March 2010

Links: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Didion 
http://www.highbridgeaudio.com/yearofmagicalthinking.html

Originally posted:             
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From Highbridge:

This powerful and moving work is Didion's “attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity about life itself.” With vulnerability and passion, Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience of love and loss.

Didion's journalistic skills are displayed as never before in this story of a year in her life that began with her daughter in a medically induced coma and her husband unexpectedly dead due to a heart attack.

This powerful and moving work is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death about illness... about marriage and children and memory... about the shallowness of sanity about life itself." With vulnerability and passion, Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience of love and loss. The Year of Magical Thinking will speak directly to anyone who has ever loved a husband, wife, or child.


From Wiki:

The Year of Magical Thinking is an account of the year following the death of the author's husband John Gregory Dunne (1932–2003). The book was immediately acclaimed as a classic in the genre of mourning literature. It won the National Book Award in November 2005 and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Biography/Autobiography.


From Publishers Weekly:

After her husband's fatal heart attack, which came at a time when their daughter Quintana was in intensive care for complications after pneumonia, Didion was labeled "a pretty cool customer" by a social worker because she seemed to be handling these shocks so calmly. Caruso's reading certainly reflects this aspect of Didion's reaction—sometimes her clear, elegant voice seems downright cold, making the listener wish for a little more emotion. The slightly eerie sounds of bells and cello that swell in at occasional breaks in the narration help in this respect, but mostly the audiobook is as straightforward a production as Didion wanted her life to be in that horrible year. Throughout those months, Didion immersed herself in the literature of grief and quotes frequently from poets and writers who helped her come to terms with her pain. Caruso does a good job with these passages, lingering on and highlighting certain phrases that Didion returns to time and again, shifting their meaning slightly as she progresses. Despite trying to write in an almost clinically detached way, Didion's sorrow and anger do break through at times in the book. Unfortunately, Caruso's cool reserve never cracks, so this audio ends up making less of an impact than the National Book Award– winning print edition. 


From The New Yorker:

Didion's husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, died of a heart attack, just after they had returned from the hospital where their only child, Quintana, was lying in a coma. This book is a memoir of Dunne's death, Quintana's illness, and Didion's efforts to make sense of a time when nothing made sense. "She's a pretty cool customer," one hospital worker says of her, and, certainly, coolness was always part of the addictive appeal of Didion's writing. The other part was the dark side of cool, the hyper-nervous awareness of the tendency of things to go bad. In 2004, Didion had her own disasters to deal with, and she did not, she feels, deal with them coolly, or even sanely. This book is about getting a grip and getting on; it's also a tribute to an extraordinary marriage. 


“Can one call an audio performance ravishing? That's what Barbara Caruso delivers in this perfect marriage of writing and narration.” -AudioFile [Earphones Award Winner]



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