The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (nonfiction)

I knew this book was about the year that followed the death of Didion's husband. However, I was surprised to find that the title refers more to Didion's grief process than to any "magic" in the traditional sense. The magical thinking is the way Didion seeks to make sense of her husband's death. The book is sad in many ways; mostly because you share the profound loss of her constant partner of 40 years. There were parts of the book that I could relate to quite well (the "what could I have done differently" parts especially), and parts where I realized I was reading, but not feeling as deeply as I might have if I had first hand knowledge.
Didion's skill in storytelling is clear: she weaves back and forth through time easily. She describes what she calls the vortex, when one memory cascades into others until you arrive at an unanswerable question such as "what should I have done instead." The year of her magical thinking leads her back in time to her early marriage, then forward to the current moment. Simultaneously, she relates her daughter's hospitalization and extended illness.
It is no wonder Didion relied on magical thinking to get her through the year after her husband's death. She lost her life long companion, and she faced the potential death of her only child. Alone. It isn't fair: the person who could help her deal with her grief the most is the person who died.
I thought the book was a deeply personal one, part philosophical, part spiritual.