Becky reviewed on 3/22/2015 + 120 more book reviews

I listened to this audio book while sewing. I greatly enjoy biographies, true crime, non-fiction, and any fictional novel that tells a great story. This book was maddening. The author is a snob. Perhaps it was just the narrator Barbara Caruso who sounds like a snob as she reads the book, but I don't think so. The book is written with such a nose in the air, high society feel, that the reader gets the feeling these people have no sincere concept of how life is lived by anyone who's net worth is less than 10 or 20 million dollars.

The author uses the phrase "It occurred to me..." so many times in the book that I literally could not believe she had ever authored any other book in the past. What a rookie mistake to use the same phrase over and over and over, not to mention boring listless writing. How could it even get past an editor? By the 5th time she said it, I felt I could write the rest of the book. Maddening. Completely maddening.

I wanted so badly to like this book. I want badly to like every book I begin to read. But, within the first or second chapter, I began to realize this was not a year of magical thinking at all. This is a very sad, sad tale of losing a spouse of about 40 years. The only magical thinking in the book is that she semi-occasionally believes she could bring him back somehow. I get that. I watched my mom reel with grief after the loss of my dad, her husband of almost 38 years. It was real and tangible. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind my mother could listen to this book and understand every sentence down to her very core, shaking her head while shouting a rousing "Yes!" to every single feeling Mrs. Didion describes. But, come on, that's not magical thinking. That's called grief. That's called sorrow. That's called sadness.

This book is perfect for someone still trying to make sense out of something totally senseless - untimely death. One minute the man is eating dinner, the next he has a fatal coronary..."The Widowmaker" as the doctor describes it. The wife's life is completely turned upside down, as one would expect. It doesn't help matters at all that their only daughter is very, very ill. This wife just can't catch a break it seems. That's what the book is about. It is NOT about magical thinking at all.

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