Didion's
mourning follows a traditional arc—she describes just how precisely it cleaves to the medical descriptions of grief—but
her elegant rendition of its stages leads to hard-won insight, particularly into the aftereffects of
marriage. "Marriage is not only time: it is also, paradoxically, the denial of time. For forty years I saw myself through John's eyes. I did not age." In a sense, all of Didion's fiction, with its themes of loss and bereavement, served as preparation for the writing of this memoir, and there is occasionally a curious hint of repetition, despite the immediacy and intimacy of the subject matter. Still, this is an indispensable addition to Didion's body of work and a lyrical, disciplined entry in the annals of
mourning literature.