Following the acclaimed and bestselling The Year of Magical Thinking, Blue Nights is Joan Didion's intensely personal and moving account of the death of her daughter, Quintana, and her thoughts, fears, and doubts about motherhood, illness, and aging.
The book opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana's wedding exactly seven years before. "Today would be her wedding anniversary." As she reflects on her daughter and her role as a parent, Didion candidly and bravely confronts the subjects of having children, of feeling like we have failed as a parent, of missing or misinterpreting our childrens' cries for help. Seamlessly woven in are incidents she sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept. Blue Nights, like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving.
