Blue Nights

Author: Joan Didion

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 19.99 AUD
  • : 9780007432905
  • : HarperCollins Publishers Limited
  • : Harper Element
  • :
  • : 0.174
  • : August 2012
  • : 197mm X 130mm
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  • : 19.99
  • : September 2012
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  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : Joan Didion
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  • : Paperback
  • : 1206
  • :
  • : English
  • : 813/.54 B
  • : General Adult
  • :
  • : 208
  • : BM
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Barcode 9780007432905
9780007432905

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.

Reviews

'Her prose is a thing of beauty' Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times 'Where the book is most successful - and most poignant - is in the viciously honest picture Didion draws of a lonely, encroaching old age! Your heart breaks for her increasing and incurable frailty' Julie Myerson, Observer

Author description

Joan Didion 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. Her previous book, The Year of Magical Thinking was an international bestseller.