Notes to John

Praise for Notes to John:
‘Utterly fascinating … shares with Blue Nights the subject of mother and daughter, generational trauma and general anxiety, and both are written with Didion’s constitutional meticulousness’ New York Times
‘An incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression, and creativity’ Guardian
‘An act of intimate storytelling … the diehard Didion fans (we know who we are) will feel hypnotized by these pages’ Vogue
‘Raw and intimate … An unfiltered stream of brutal self-examination from a writer who was painfully conscious about shaping her public image’ New York Times Book Review
‘Has a candour which refutes any charges of exploitation’ Julian Barnes, author of Departure(s), in the New Statesman
‘A profound, rich document’ New Statesman
‘Written with the immediacy of fresh recollection … Readers of her memoirs will recognise how these notes inform those final books – the striving to understand and the sense of futility that comes with it’ New Yorker
‘It’s fascinating to see her making connections and presenting evidence of misremembered parts of her past … offers insight into her work’ iPaper
‘‘An unfiltered and unrestrained glimpse into domestic distress, the unavoidable guilt of motherhood, and the great burden of legacy’ The Nation
‘A tour de force from one of the best’ People
‘A valuable glance behind the scenes, a study of how her outlook, and the weight of her talent, factored into life off the page’ Irish Independent
‘An unfiltered glimpse into the mind of the New Journalism poster girl’AnOther
‘Much of Notes to John will feel familiar to anyone who’s coped with a loved one cycling between recovery and relapses. Her notes capture the maddening, circular nature of this dilemma’ Slate
‘A reckoning with what one can and can’t accept or change’ Alta
‘An unexpected parting gift to biographers and civilian readers … direct and personal, shorn of vanity’ Air Mail

Joan Didion is one of America’s most respected writers, her work constituting some of the greatest portraits of modern-day American culture. Over the four decades of her career, she has produced widely-acclaimed journalistic essays, personal essays, novels, non-fiction, memoir and screenplays. Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award in 2005.

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