When I read The Year of Magical Thinking -- a book in which Didion is coping with the sudden loss of her husband, John Dunne, while her daughter is ill -- I noticed that one of the main ideas there seemed to be that the gift of memory, while often a blessing, can also be a curse. All the remembering can make a person very anxious.

In many ways, Blue Nights sort of picks up where Year of Magical Thinking left off, only this time Joan Didion is mourning the loss of her only child, her daughter Quintana. Once again, the idea that memory can be a curse is very prominent as she recalls details of Quintana's life -- from the doctor calling her to say he had a perfect baby girl she could adopt, through her childhood, and until the day Quintana died.

Didion has now lost her husband and her daughter, and something she seems to keep coming back to in Blue Nights is this idea that, yes, memory can be a curse in the ways that it never lets you rest. You're always hearing, always seeing, always remembering. That can be a great thing, but it can also be very painful because it can prevent a person from moving on. But if those memories were to be lost? Well, that might be a thing to be feared.

Throughout this book (which is as beautifully written and insightful as Year of Magical Thinking), Didion struggles not only with the loss of her daughter, but also with accepting her own aging; her own frailty.

A student of literature, I don't find myself highlighting passages or annotating many books anymore, but I felt compelled to do so with this one. The insight that Joan Didion is able to convey (while simultaneously expressing her concern that she is losing her words) is brilliant. She touches on these ideas and emotions that are so human that it's almost difficult to identify them (until you read and say, "Yes. Yes, I know that feeling." I felt like this particularly when she talked about hanging on to mementos of people -- physical memories -- in an effort to keep them with her, which is something I find myself doing quite often.

This book didn't make me sob or even cry at all in the way Year of Magical Thinking did. But it's still a beautiful remembrance.

Some Favorite Lines

Time passes.
Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember. (13)

In theory, these mementos serve to bring back the moment.
In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here.
How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see. (46)

"You have your wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. . . . Memories are what you no longer want to remember." (64)

Of course I had considered this possibility.
Accepting it would be something else. (124)

We had no idea then how rare recovery can be. (154)

When we lose that sense of the possible we lose it fast. (183)

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. (188)