Blue Nights Book

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. 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.

A frank and moving memoir of loss from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking.