Blue Nights

A Memoir

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Kimberly Farr

From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.

Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana’s wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana’s childhood—in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed, either because cues were not taken or perhaps displaced. “How could I have missed what was clearly there to be seen?” Finally, perhaps we all remain unknown to each other. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept.

Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, “the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning”—like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving.

©2011 Joan Didion (P)2011 Random House

wonderful tribute of a mother's love of her child

having lost an only child I identified with Joan looking back over the memories - looking for a clue or sign to help understand the lost of a child along with some regrets & things you might have done differently. The book is a tribute to a mother's love for her child.

Joan Didion expresses heartache like no one else. Compelling and contemplative.

Blue Nights is an honest, contemplative, and often raw look—through Didion’s own recollection—at the hardest parts of life for many of us; especially women. She is always efficient with her words,
and pinpoints exactly which words to use to paint a picture for the reader that evokes relatable and honest feelings. I am so glad I read it and I plan to buy the hard copy to read again later in my life. It’s an important book.

Right in the feels

This is the saddest, most beautiful book I’ve read. I still haven’t read all of Joan Didion’s works, but it would be hard to top this one.

Genius

There’s no one like Joan- her depth and insights are incomparable 💜 and this is a particularly deep exploration of life aging and death

Not for Sissies

As a screenwriter, Joan Didion and her husband wrote the script for "Play it as it Lays." As a widow, she tells it like it is in her memoir of loss and aging, "Blue Nights." This is not an easy book to read, and not for those who decry negative thinking and believe in the magic of medicine. Didion knows better, and in her spare, carefully chosen words describes the process of unrecoverable diminishment and death in a way no one else has dared. No sentimentality, no upbeat insistence, just the truth. Those who enjoyed Didion in her prime, and in theirs, will find that this book speaks to them with stunning honesty.

Read it in a day I liked it so much.

What made the experience of listening to Blue Nights the most enjoyable?

I loved the writing and the tale.

What did you like best about this story?

I believed it.

Which character – as performed by Kimberly Farr – was your favorite?

The mother.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The relationship between the mother and her daughter was painful and powerful all at the same time.

Any additional comments?

If you like Joan Didian, you'll like this book.

Moving to hear thoughts, feelings of great writer

Would you listen to Blue Nights again? Why?

Yes. I will listen to it again.

What does Kimberly Farr bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Pauses. Time to let thoughts sink in.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No more emotional than Didion's thoughts themselves, which, by their starkness, are moving. Often through their repetition.

Any additional comments?

Waiting for the next writings by Joan Didion.

Joan Didion's writings on grief are masterful.

Didion's years as a journalist have culminated in two invaluable works on how we experience loss and grief. This book and The Year of Magical Thinking were both must reads.

I can't believe I had never heard of her

I finished 2 of her books in 2 days. What an amazing writer, so talented. She had such a full life and her share of grief. She wrote this candid book as a tribute to her daughter and about herself struggling with aging at the age of 75 and it is so perfectly articulated. I want to read more of what she's written but I think I need to take a break for now - these 2 books wiped me out.

terrific book

If you could sum up Blue Nights in three words, what would they be?

Didion makes you live in her skin

Who was your favorite character and why?

Joan Didion is the dominant character in the book. It is through her eyes that you see her daughter, her husband, parents and others of her circle. You feel as much as if you are in her skin as if it was a fictional tale with her being the fictional narrator.

What does Kimberly Farr bring to the story that you wouldn???t experience if you just read the book?

Didion is a great writer. I am sure the book would be excellent in print form. Farr is a very good narrator. I was so sorry that the book was over.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I think it was the repetition, including the repitition of Quintana's remembered questions of her adoptive mother,