Blue nights

 by Joan Didion. Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), her chronicle of grief following the abrupt death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, evoked a powerful response from a widely diverse readership and won the National Book Award. Left untold was the story of the life and death of Dunne and Didion's daughter, Quintana Roo, the subject of this scalpel-sharp memoir of motherhood and loss. Didion looks to blue nights summer evenings whe. the twilights turn long and blu. only to heral. the dying of the brightnes. to define the dark limbo she's endured since August 2005, when Quintana Roo, 39, died after nearly two years of harrowing medical crises and complications. Didion looks back to her own peripatetic childhood, her and Dunne's life as world-traveling Hollywood screenwriters, and their spontaneously arranged private adoption of their newborn daughter. As Didion portrays Quintana Roo as a smart and stoic girl given t. quicksilve. mood changes, she parses the conundrums of adoption and chastises herself for maternal failings. Now coping with not only grief and regret but also illness and age, Didion is courageous in both her candor and artistry, ensuring that this infinitely sad yet beguiling book of distilled reflections and remembrance is graceful and illuminating in its blue musings. --Booklist (Check Catalog)