I 'picked up' this book by chance, while sleep-deprived and in need of something to read to fill the remaining 9 hours of my layover. I was not expecting to like it - in fact, I expecting nothing at all, because I didn't know what it was about. It was such an intense experience. The Year of Magical Thinking describes the year following the death of Joan Didion's husband (and her daughter falling very, very ill). It gives the impression of having been written in a state of confusion, and pain. Well, it clearly was. It is raw, and yet beautifully written. It is stuffed with random quotes on grief, from poetry, and novels, and academic studies - and yet it does not get boring. There is no room for boredom, because this account of love, and sudden death, and loss of love, and loss of meaning, is so alive.