‘Blue Nights’ by Joan Didion
Just over a month ago now I had the pleasure of reading Joan Didion's celebrated memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. To say that the book floored me would be something of an understatement, and I look forward to revisiting it in the future. I even passed it on to my father, citing it as an invaluable resource on the awful subject of losing a spouse, though due to work and other such commitments he has not yet had the occasion to read it. I hope he will soon. Didion's new memoir, entitled Blue Nights, was published a mere eight days ago, so it would be fair to say that I have been eagerly awaiting its arrival. Though it seems a little crass to describe it as such, Blue Nights is something of a sequel to 2005's The Year of Magical Thinking as it concerns - at least as a starting point - the illness and passing of Didion's daughter Quintana Roo, who was just thirty-nine years old when she died.
The book begins with Didion writing on what would have been Quintana's seventh wedding anniversary, and she recalls in poignant detail the unique elements of that wedding day: the Hawaiian leis in place of traditional bouquets; the stephanotis braided through Quintana's hair; the vibrant red soles of her Christian Louboutin pumps which became visible when she kneeled at the altar. From mulling over Quintana's would-be wedding anniversary Didion moves on to discuss her birth and adoption, along with the more unusual aspects of her upbringing such as stays (on expenses) in some of the world's ritziest hotels including the Plaza Athenee in Paris and The Dorchester in London. There is no clear narrative, however, and Didion also muses about ageing, illness, and perceived parental shortcomings - not just her own, but those of others.
The memoir is dedicated exclusively to Quintana, whose black-and-white childhood portrait adorns the back of this hardcover edition. When Didion writes about her directly, which is actually less than you might expect, she talks of a precocious and somewhat introspective little girl, a young girl who preferred to roam around her Malibu home barefoot and favoured cucumber and watercress sandwiches. Didion admits to having treated her like a doll at times, once even going so far as to raise the alarm over a routine loose tooth. She emphatically declares that after having Quintana she was 'never not afraid.'
Though Blue Nights is written in the same spare and surgical style as its 2005 predecessor it is a great deal murkier in terms of the emotions conveyed. And yet how could it not be? As if writing about one's late husband were not difficult enough, Didion has gallantly taken on the challenge of writing about losing a daughter. There is a digressive, almost stream-of-consciousness quality to much of what is covered in Blue Nights. In a way this reflects Joan Didion's own admission that while working on the book she found that writing no longer came easily to her. And yet this memoir reads like a thriller, in a perverse way, and I found myself able to read it in two measly sittings - much less than my average. And though it is not quite as clear as The Year of Magical Thinking (expect a lot of rhetorical and impossible to answer questions) it is just as candid and compelling. As ever Didion steers clear of platitudes and sugary statements, calling upon her essay writing experience to illustrate many of her observations, and the result is an insightful and heartbreakingly honest account of getting old, looking back, and learning to get by without the ones we love.
This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in November 2011.