El año del pensamiento mágico

Escrito por Joan Didion

Narrado por Nuria Pérez

Unas memorias conmovedoras sobre la enfermedad y la muerte a través de la experiencia personal de la periodista y escritora Joan Didion.

Este libro memorable ha cautivado a millones de lectores en todo el mundo. En él, la escritora Joan Didion, una de las autoras norteamericanas más reputadas de finales del siglo XX, narra con una fascinante distancia emocional la muerte repentina de su marido, el también escritor John Gregory Dunne. Este libro tan breve como intenso es, por consiguiente, una reflexión sobre el duelo y la crónica de una supervivencia.

El año del pensamiento mágico obtuvo el National Book Award en 2005.

Reseñas:
«Llena de detalles y de una deslumbrante honestidad [...], un retrato indeleble de la pérdida y el luto.»
Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

«Un acto consumado de valentía literaria, una escritora reconocida por su claridad que nos permite entrar en su mente mientras esta se nubla por el luto.»
Lev Grossman, Time

«Un libro que, repitiendo el tópico, se lee "como una novela" y cuya tensión sale de las entrañas de un ser herido pero dotado con una excepcional capacidad analítica y expresiva.»
El Cultural

«En una cultura donde la elaboración de los sentimientos [...] ha sido rescindida por una prohibición directa a través de la vergüenza o por el "deber ético del goce" [...], el libro de Didion duplica el valor del testimonio y de la invitación que lanza a un mundo de bobos emocionales técnicamente competentes.»
El Mundo

«El libro es un intento de trascender el estupor y sinsentido en que nos deja sumidos el dolor cuando experimentamos la muerte de alguien muy cercano.»
Eduardo Lago, Babelia, El País

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: Penguin Random House Audio
• Traductor: Javier Calvo Perales
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 16 nov 2023
• ISBN: 9788439743354

Joan Didion

Joan Didion (Sacramento, 1934 - Nueva York, 2021) fue una célebre novelista y periodista estadounidense. Graduada por la Universidad de Berkeley en California, se le concedió el doctorado honoris causa en letras por las universidades de Harvard y Yale. Comenzó trabajandoen la revista Vogue, donde ejerció de editora y crítica de cine, y fue colaboradora habitual de The New York Review of Books. Junto a su marido, John Gregory Dunne, escribió también guiones cinematográficos, entre los que se encuentra el basado en Según venga el juego, llevada al cine por Frank Perry y protagonizada por un joven Anthony Perkins. Es autora de las novelas Río revuelto, Según venga el juego, Book of Common Prayer, Democracy y The Last Thing He Wanted. También de varios libros de memorias, como Where I Was From, Noches azules y el aclamado El año del pensamiento mágico, que fue ganador del National Book Award y finalista del Premio Pulitzer y del National Book Critics Circle Award. A lo largo de su carrera publicó diversos libros de ensayo sobre la cultura y la política norteamericanas,una selección de los cuales se incluyen en Los que sueñan el sueño dorado, así como Lo que quiero decir, una colección de sus primeros artículos y crónicas, o sus anotaciones inéditas, recogidas en Sur y Oeste. La mayor parte de su obra en lengua española ha sido publicada en Literatura Random House.

Comentarios para El año del pensamiento mágico

[Karen Solis · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

El libro más increíble, profundo, verídico. En todo lo que nos transformamos cuando nuestros seres amados mueren, en el total de las pérdidas, en los significados, en querer que regresen y tener que dejarlos ir para poder vivir sabiendo que podemos regresar a ellos una y otra y otra vez.

Gracias Joan Didion

[jpahl-248569 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Sad woman, sad life, beautiful writing

[bobyworry-346048 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

An unreal set of circumstances leading to the author's journey through grief and mourning with memories and the changes she went through...almost too much to take at times...but she kept going...

[tytania-2 · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I don't know why I read this. It's about the year after Joan Didion's husband died and her adult daughter hovered near death in various ICU's. The "magical thinking" was semi-conscious thinking like "I can't give away his shoes; if he comes back, he'll need shoes." I have not yet lost my spouse and I don't know what to say about it; I guess, thanx for the tip as to how horrible it's going to be.

[helenliz_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

This is a valuable piece of writing on grief. In December 2003, her husband has a massive heart attack at the dinner table and dies. At the same time, their daughter is in ICU with pneumonia. Over the course of the next year, she goes through an emotional wringer, dealing with the grief and the health issues of her daughter. She tries to make sens of the emotions and thinking she is experiencing, by reference to her peer group, her parents' generation and reading. I was particularly struck by the book on grief etiquette and how that has changed. Some of what she reported I recognised from the loss of my father (the shock, the bliss of forgetting and the pain of remembering, being side swiped). There is little writing on the nature of grief in the modern age, when faith is not the support it once may have been and when death is kept out of sight; this feels to be a valuable contribution to the subject.

[foof2you · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Death happens to us all. What happens when your husband dies while one is making dinner. That is the situation that Joan Didion explores in this book. The emotions that she goes through from December 30, 2003 following is a poignant look how death affected Ms. Didion.

[cecilturtle · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I had no idea what I was embarking in with this book. While it is on the difficult topics of death and illness of loved ones, Didion strikes the balance of heightened emotion, fond memories, coping mechanisms and journalistic approach - a unique and compelling way of describing some of the toughest moments in a person's life. It is never pitying but it is an open account of the myriad of emotions and stages that the author went through. A remarkably authentic, interesting, and touching read.

[wvlibrarydude · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

A well written journey of the year after the death of her husband of 40 years. This time of mourning and grief was interrupted by a severe illness of her daughter that actually preceded her husband's death and took up the first 5 months of time after John Dunne's death. She shares the irrational thoughts, memories, loss, and struggle to be without her husband. Not an easy thing to do as well as she does.
I read this book 10 years after my father's death. I am closing on 51. The obituaries in the paper begin to have more and more people my age or younger. Death is beginning to feel more familiar in my life. I think about my own death and those I love and cherish. How will I "cope" with that time of grief and mourning again? Ten years have gone by and I still selfishly miss my father in my life. It does happen less frequently, but then I chastise myself for not missing him more. Mourning is very selfish.
Thanks Ms Didion for sharing your journey.

[joannajuki · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Restraint, delicacy and precision holds fast against a wall of grief and despair. Very beautifully written.

[ewyatt_16 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Didion writes about her life together with her husband of 40 years in the year after his death. The reader can feel her attempts to cope, to understand, to keep the pieces together. She turns to poetry, to medicine, to friends and her remembrances to try to make sense of things.
Some things come up like a mantra, and there's a sense of the time ticking and never being enough of it.
There's name and place dropping from a life together full of travel and adventures and work. There is also the overlapping trauma of her only child's very serious medical difficulties involving ICUs and surgeries during that same period of time.

[thegalaxygirl · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Didion's writing always makes me think of a Faberge egg. At once so elegant, with every word placed with a jeweler's precision, and also so artificial. I've read a couple of her novels, some of her essays, and although I am in awe at her skill with structure, language, and subtext, and the control with which she arranges her words, I'm never left wanting to read more. In this memoir, her fierce intelligence, her rationalism all come out on the page. Her emotion, less so. I am left to assume what I would be feeling in a similar circumstance. It is only because I already know how rational and controlled she is that I can sense her distress as her rationality and control fail to (in her words), "manage the situation." When her rationality fails, period. If I did not already know these things about Joan Didion, I would define her as the social worker in the hospital defined her, as a "cool customer." But these are the only weapons she has to grapple with the terrible tsunami of grief. And when her daughter falls ill, it is these weapons that enable her to again, manage the situation.

I was also struck by her position and privilege. Her matter-of-factness when speaking of the people she knows who "have influence at State or Justice," her ability to fly to Paris or Honolulu at essentially a moment's notice, her coterie of friends and family who have houses in various places and where she can ask for permission to stay as she keeps a vigil over her daughter in the hospital. The silver. The china. The wine. The many restaurants where she and her husband have eaten. Her privilege is on the page more than her passion; and it isn't even that I mind so much -- it's that she seems so unconscious of it. And although none of that could prevent her husband from dying, or ease the pain of her loss, there is no question that it smoothed the path.

I read this right after I read Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and there couldn't be two books more different, although they have the common frame of grief. But each one served to illuminate the other. Joan Didion's loss caused her to have "cognitive deficiencies:" she misremembered dates and addresses and lost bits of the last days with her husband. Strayed's cognitive deficiencies took the form of drug use and infidelity. Didion picked up her pen, and Strayed picked up a backpack. But neither of them were in their right minds.

[nogomu · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Duh. So freaking beautiful.

[anniekmd · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I was given this book by someone who loved it. It is a memoir of the year following the author’s husband’s death and while her only child is seriously ill. I had been unfamiliar with the famous author prior to reading the book.
The book was well-written, and it was touching to see the author try to cope with her devastating loss. But it was not for me, and I found myself skimming over certain sections.

[profh-1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Easily the best work I’ve ever read by Didion. Some of her quirks are there to delight or frustrate familiar readers, but unlike much of her writing—this isn’t a detached, vapid, all action-off-page kind of work. This work clearly, often beautifully, shows how the mind operates in times of grief, morning, and loss. The writer’s clear explanation and detailed mental processing can certainly help any reader. I wasn’t a big fan of her only-style, emptiness aesthetic, but this has to be her masterpiece and it is an important contribution to this field.

[tinkerbellkk · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

My first book by this author and I found her story to be gut-wrenching. It seemed like she was in the room telling me about her pain. So well written, incredibly emotional and such raw feelings on the pages. The retelling of the loss of her husband was such a personal account. I hope it gave her some peace after writing it.

[andy5185 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Depressing, but amazing. Make sure you have a box of tissues with you when you read it.

[steve02476 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Powerful introspective memoir. Very sad, of course, but I admired her ability to look into herself.

[annbury_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

As a recent widow, I found a great deal I could relate to in this book -- more than in many other more positive discussions of grief. There is nothing positive about grief or loss, something that Didion makes crystal clear. Also, grief and loss cloud our thinking, they are painful, and they erode our sense of self. Didion's style is cool and analytic. What she has to say does not offer much comfort of the "it will get better" variety, but it does give this reader at least a sense of not being alone in a flood of emotion. Why not five stars? The book is so cool, so understated, that it leaves a sense of something missing.

[ms_rowse · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I can't quite describe Didion's writing, other than when I read her work, I feel like someone has pulled the warmest, softest blanket over me and I am in a place of peace and rest. Even with this topic, which is heartbreaking.

I haven't lost anyone in death as important to me as John Dunne was to her, but I've felt similar grief with other losses in my life. Those descriptions of grief were hard to read at times. But throughout the book, I found my expectations of marriage shifting once again. If I ever should get married, I want to have a marriage that leaves me in a similar state of grief as Didion describes. Morbid? Perhaps. But as she writes about their lunches and dinners and movies and day-to-day operations as a couple, their dependency on each other is what I want. Hard to describe without referencing specific pages numbers.

I borrowed this from the library, but I'll be buying my own copy to read again and mark up. Amazing book.

[charon07 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

A thoughtful and thought-provoking reflection on grief and mourning.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Didion is a wonderful writer and her journey through grief is very relatable, but not sure of the title, even though it is mentioned in the narrative.

[meredy_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This was just the right book for me now and just the right thing to crash through my months-long reading slump, the first I can remember in my adult life.

Joan Didion's searching chronicle of her first year following the sudden death of her husband in 2004 helped steer me toward an essential realism in my own similar crisis. She sheds light on such ordinarily inexpressible traumas as the shattering of all our connections and the collapsing of the everyday routines that anchor our lives. She distinguishes valuably between mourning and grief. She exposes her own toxic denial and turns it to recognition.

I'd never read any of Didion's work before, but I'll be back for more. The pairing of her prose, clear as lead crystal, with the plumbing of emotions and perceptions too deep for most people's words, worked a kind of catharsis for me. Like her, I'm struggling to grasp that no response is coming and that the absence is permanent.

And that in the end you have to go with the change.

"There was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible. That was why I needed to be alone." (page 32)

[dele2451 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Didion does a deep dive into the process of grief and mourning after the sudden death of her husband at home and near-loss of their only daughter in the same year. Powerful in the raw pain it conveys, but beautifully written.

[drfuriosa · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

This is a gutting account of death and loss in the span of a year. Joan Didion is a novelist whose daughter suddenly ends up in the hospital with a mysterious unexplained illness, and in the middle of her ICU tenure, Didion's husband suddenly dies. In the middle of this grief, her daughter recovers and collapses again, and Didion reviews her life, questioning everything that could be a sign. This is a raw memoir and goes back and forth in time, as Didion processes her grief and her life moving forward.

[runningbeardbooks · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I sought out this book in the belief that I could learn from her grief.
Yet what I experienced was a wall of affluence that kept me at a distance.
Somewhere in there is the pained little naked animal bursting with love and loss.

[chrisk916 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Ms. Didion is a wonderful writer. I felt the emotions with every chapter. (And I have not had the type of loss that she went through) ... If was so compelling that I did not and do not want to reread it . It made me feel sad...

She is a wonderful writer because in her story, I felt like i was there. I could feel the world of magical thinking and understood how it happened, and why.

I am hopeful that she was able to heal by doing what she does, write.

[pdcread · Calificación: 2 de 5 estrellas]

This is the book that Didon wrote after the very sudden death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, at home over dinner. At the same time her daughter was seriously ill in hospital, and was not aware of her fathers death until a while after the event.

She wrote in the year it after his death, and completed the manuscript one day after the anniversary. They had been married since the early sixties, and were both writers, and spent time in New York and on the West Coast.

In the book she explores her feelings, sometime with lucidity and raw emotion, and other times the writing is less coherent. She writes of the grieving process, and the way that she coped with him missing from her life, the emptiness of the house, the altered routines and void that he left.

She left the manuscript fairly well untouched before publication ash I feel that it really does reflect her feeling over that year, especially as she had to cope alone with her daughter being very seriously ill. It is well written, but is a bleak and uncompromising book to read.

[jphamilton-1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This was my second reading of this sometimes searing book about Joan Didion’s loss of her husband, the author John Gregory Dunne, and the serious health struggles of her daughter, Quintana. I first read this book when I was living in a different universe, one where my wife was still alive, we were running our independent bookstore together, and surrounded by customers and friends every day. All those things are gone now. Ones personal viewpoint is the lens that one reads all books through. I don’t think anyone could read this book without feeling her pain, as I did the first time, but with this reading, I was sharing and understanding that pain much more personally.
Didion is one America’s very best writers. She has traveled the world, visited some extremely dangerous areas, but replaying and putting this very personal and dreadful time period on paper—and later onto the stage as a one-woman show with Vanessa Redgrave—showed some true bravery. In the end, she found that it was a helpful therapeutic process. I think that this goes to show that she is always a professional and has such a vastly curious mind.
The book details the period in December of 2003 when Quintana fell into a septic shock associated with a pneumonia infection. With their daughter still in the hospital, the couple returns to their home for a dinner in their apartment on December 30. Suddenly, Dunne slumped in his seat, and crashed to the floor, and onto his face. Joan at first thought he might be joking, but shortly the EMTs raced away with him. After a confusing time at the hospital, she was told that John is dead.
Before she had finished writing this book, her daughter dies. When asked if she wanted revise the book to include Quintana’s death before its publication, Didion said “it’s finished.” Later, she was to write about the death in her book, Blue Nights.
There are many points in the book that were very familiar to me, as someone who has also lost a spouse. Didion, undoubtedly a most intelligent person, had a haunting thought that Dunne would soon return to her. Thus, she couldn’t get rid of all his shoes, because wouldn’t he need them? Grief has the ability to scramble a reasonable mind in so many ways. Didion writes about the grief of losing a spouse as being unpredictable and something one can’t approach understanding unless they have gone through it, having joined the “club.” I could go on at length about grief and Didion’s experience, but I would just refer you to her excellent writing in The Year of Magical Thinking. Not to seem trite, but she gets it.

[zelmerwilson · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I loved it. I plan on reading more of her books.

[pferdina · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

The author describes how she survived the year after her husband of 40 years died suddenly, while their daughter was also undergoing serious medical issues.