DIDION, JOAN
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.
