A Book of Common Prayer, although it is Joan Didion's third novel, is a relatively early book (1977) for she is still working today in 2012. What I enjoy most about it is what I also loved about her later book Democracy : a distinctive style that orchestrates and shapes, using white space as sile...
It is perhaps significant that I purchased my copy of this book at the Vroman's bookstore on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. I loved the brief time I lived in California (though it was so short and so recent I doubt I even qualify as one of Didion's 'new people') and this seems like an almost tal...
Damn, so many of the reviews for this book are terrible. I kind of want to get a gazillion votes for this review just so that it will come before some of the nonsense in the other reviews. Any talk of post-modernism or meta-fiction or there being too many characters in this novel (there aren't ...
MARIA C’EST MOIOgni libro di Joan Didion che leggo è più bello del precedente, e sono tutti magnifici. Non è certo la trama che lo rende così grande, la storia è presto detta, è già sentita: giovane starlet di Hollywood precocemente sul viale del tramonto in preda a ennui, divide il suo tempo tra...
If I had started with The White Album instead of Slouching Toward Bethlehem I might have been spared two years of blithely embarrassing myself with statements like: “Joan Didion? She’s ok.” Actually she’s amazing. The rhythms of her self-dramatization in Slouching were too arch for my taste, or p...
Joan Didion is that rare thing: an American woman of letters whose pronouncements on that country’s way of life are considered to bear great weight. Journalist, essayist, novelist and columnist, her intelligent and perceptive observations have probed her nation’s psyche for three decades.In this...
I find Joan Didion to be a fascinating Essayist. And while I appreciate the melancholic, dry tone of Run, River, I don’t think this book did her writing justice. Then again, it was her debut novel. I’m going to go into detail as there’s a lot of that on here, but it’s not a face-value novel - I'd...