Blue Nights

Ostensibly an account of the life and death of her adopted daughter Quintana Roo, Blue Nights, Joan Didion's follow up to The Year of Magical Thinking, is also a reckoning of her own life, her impending death, and the memories that linger and torment her. The anguish Didion feels about her shoddy parenting, her inability to recognize Quintana's emotional issues, or her impotence in the face of death is undeniable and occasionally moving. Unfortunately, it's vaporized by pages of self-important prose shot through with needless repetitions, and expressed in a condescending authorial voice that too often instructs the reader to take note of the special significance of particular passages that don't require further scrutiny. To make matters worse, as the book loses focus and Didion increasingly relies on one-sentence paragraphs to drive her already-understood points home, her final complaint seems to be that her life of glamour, travel, and fine objects has failed to protect her from what she's faced with now—the same messy, unpleasant, disappointing slings and arrows that the rest of the human race has to contend with. It would be easy to feel sympathy for Didion, but in Blue Nights she angrily demands it—and the effect is off-putting.