Notes to John by Joan Didion

Whether this is your first time reading Joan Didion (welcome!) or your hundredth, this is an essential exploration of the human condition from an irreplaceable voice. Deeply personal yet objectively universal, it’s as much a lens into Didion’s life as it is an invitation to turn the scope inward on our own lives.

An extraordinary work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights.

In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.” She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods. There were discussions about her own childhood—misunderstandings and lack of communication with her mother and father, her early tendency to anticipate catastrophe—and the question of legacy, or, as she put it, “what it’s been worth.” The analysis would continue for more than a decade.

Didion’s journal was crafted with the singular intelligence, precision, and elegance that characterize all of her writing. It is an unprecedently intimate account that reveals sides of her that were unknown, but the voice is unmistakably hers—questioning, courageous, and clear in the face of a wrenchingly painful journey.