My Lunchbox Diary XXV

My Lunchbox Diary XXIV

Reading While Nursing 7

 The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

I read Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking because I was looking for something to read to give to a friend who just lost her husband. 

He passed away in an accident, and I do not know what to do to console my friend seeing her losing weight and facing everyone in the farewell event. 

The book consists only of Didion's monologue, which records how she thinks and suffers after having lost her husband to a sudden heart arrest. It was until the end that we knew that she also lost her daughter eighteen months afterwards. What she reveals in the book is heart-breaking. 

Some readers complained that she is narcissistic because there is no one else in the narrative but herself, her thoughts, her anxiety, and her calmness. I would think, however, that of course she has to be narcissistic. The dead have left, the living are alone to figure out what has happened. Of course, one has to focus on him-/her-self, and no surrogate can be found to grieve, moan, and suffer.