3.5 stars.

Didion’s written reckoning with loss, love, and the loneliness of sorrow is undoubtedly beautiful to behold. To my end, I couldn’t help but be pulled away from wholly resonating as so often her retellings exposed intimately a life of relative wealth and privilege.

I could not quiet the voice in the back of mind that wondered often how differently, and possibly more brutally, these events would be experienced from the place of one with much less. Didion’s job in her writing was to remember, not to grapple with this reality and I cannot count her position against her (grief is not contained by one’s social position) but it did ultimately take away from my personal enjoyment & fulfillment with the text.