Book description
From one of America's greatest and most iconic writers: an honest and
courageous portrait of age and motherhood.
Several days before Christmas 2003, Joan Didion's only daughter,
Quintana, fell seriously ill. In 2010, Didion marked the sixth
anniversary of her daughter's death. 'Blue Nights' is a shatteringly
honest examination of Joan Didion's life as a mother, a woman and a writer.
Recently widowed, and becoming increasingly frail, 'Blue Nights' is
Didion's attempt to understand our deepest fears, our inadequate
adjustments to ageing and to put a name to what we refuse to see and as
a consequence fail to face up to, 'this refusal even to engage in such
contemplation, this failure to confront the certainties of ageing,
illness and death. This fear.' This fear is tied to what we cherish most
and fight to conserve, protect, and refuse to let go, for, 'when we are
talking about mortality we are talking about our children.' To face
death is to let go of memory, to be bereft once more, 'I know what it is
I am now experiencing. I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.'
The fear is not for what is lost.
The fear is for what is still to be lost.
You may see nothing still to be lost.
Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her.
A profound, poetic and powerful book about motherhood and the fierce
way in which we continue to exalt and nurture our children, even if they
only live on in memory.
'Blue Nights' is an intensely personal, and yet, strangely universal
account of how we love. It is both groundbreaking and a culmination of a
stunning career. Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New
York. She is the author of five novels and seven previous books of
nonfiction: among them the great portraits of a decade in essays,
'Sentimental Journeys', 'The White Album', and 'Slouching Towards
Bethlehem'.
