Well, for me this book was a write-off, at close to the 50% mark I gave it a rest and thought about it for a while and after a few days decided there was much better reading about.
First, I have to say I know little about Joan Didion or her husband; in that I am maybe like most outside of the USA. Her work has been mainly USA centric. She may not be anything like the picture I make for myself out of this book, I am limited to the message the book passes to me.
I wondered if the book was self serving written from some sort of guilt rather than grief (or for the purpose of describing the psychology of grief), or a vehicle for name dropping and "I've been everywhere man, and there many times", although I was not engrossed enough to figure out if the "many times" was just the flood of repetition though the book or were actual many visits.
Around the 35% mark the flood of everyone with a name worth dropping started being dropped, most being names before my time or pretty much unknowns outside of (and perhaps within) the USA. When names were not dropped we got told the likes of she knew all the right surgeons, politicians, journalists, airline people and who have you to call so that she could manage (sic) situations. We even get to know the make and model of her husband's pacemaker, all the various medications, treatments and choppings up after death that floated through the family's medical adventures, poems and poets float into the story like falling snow, even what weather app she uses on her phone (AccuWeather, just in case you have forgotten
).
And did I mention that the repetition was tiresome for me?
Now, against that I can read the worst of the most name dropping of memoirs by popular musicians who tend to drop a flood of names that would drive Joan Didion to drink. While they can be a little tedious it is part of their career to actually work with those people and generally forms an important part of the story. So, when Elvis Costello writes about working with Paul McCartney, for example, it is the "working with" that is the matter; or when a string of names are given associated with an event they come across as giving structure to the description of the event. Whereas Didion gave me the feeling that names just dropped like snow flakes for little reason other than mentioning them (and none of them really that famous to be worth having their names dropped, I thought).
And did I mention that the repetition was tiresome for me?
In the end (well at the just before 50% mark) I gave up for the reasons above and the feeling that she had a better opinion of herself than I thought she was worth. And did I tell you that she was repetitive?
All in all, for me I thought it could stand being thinned down into a short chapter in a whole of life biography, but perhaps there is not enough other stuff to flesh out such a work (cynic that I am), or, of course, she could just use repetition, name dropping, "I've been everywhere, man", etc. to get plenty of words down. In case I haven't done so, did I tell you that I didn't read the whole book?
Nasty aren't I, but honest (well most of the time
).