Jake Triffitt Triffitt itibaren Newdigate, Surrey, İngiltere
The story of this National Book Award winner is legend already: Didion's grown daughter was admitted to the hospital, entered into a septic coma, and four days later (Dec 30, 2003) her husband of forty years, the writer John Gregory Dunne, suddenly collpased at dinner and died of a massive coronary. The book details the year that follows: grieving, watching her daughter convalesce and then fall ill once again, and the process of starting over when your best friend and lover is abruptly taken from you. The style is incredibly honest and raw—one has the impression of reading a journal reorganized along a thematic chronology, if not always a true one—repeating key sentences throughout as mantras. This is not a Chicken Soup book, with easy outs and uplifting messages in the end, rather a brutal look at what most of us never want to look at: what do you do with your minutes, your hours after a loved one dies? When do you throw out their shoes? When do you clean out their desk? Didion provides plenty of ancillary work from psychologists, writers, poets, even Emily Post regarding death and grieving, which props up her own grief, helps to shape its borders into something quasi-manageable. As someone who also puts implicit trust in the words of others, I can't help but wonder if I'll reach for literature in similiar circumstances. With this book, I know now at least I'll have a primer, a fellow voice in what she calls the "vortex."