Didion’s Blue Nights is here to remind us of average, wonderful and uncomfortable things. We will love people and lose them. We will relish and shun memories to protect and hurt ourselves. We will know certain elements of our loved ones and not others. We may discover new parts of them as we grow old, as they do. We will get old and older. We will all feel differently about aging, about the way our bodies betray us, about the wisdom that does or doesn’t come. We will question ourselves. We will get swept up in joy and tragedy. Sure, this might not make you feel better about who you are, about mortality, about the simple facts of living. But Didion also writes so elegantly of her life, of fancy California baptism parties, beautiful cakes, Chanel suits, gardens, New York apartments, that you remember those parts as vividly as days with her dying daughter in the ICU. In her details there is opulence and loveliness, there is social commentary that trickles in to remind us and herself of how she lived and lives, how she parented, how she loved. And even though her writing amazes it has not cured her of her feelings. Her losses still exist. Her losses sit with her everyday.
