Notes to John

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What to expect

‘Utterly fascinating' NEW YORK TIMES

'A profound, rich document’ NEW STATESMAN

'An act of intimate storytelling' VOGUE

A recently discovered journal from one of America's most iconic writers, Joan Didion, the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights

In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had 'a rough few years'. She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods. There were discussions about her own childhood – misunderstandings and lack of communication with her mother and father, her early tendency to anticipate catastrophe – and the question of legacy, or, as she put it, 'what it’s been worth'. The analysis would continue for more than a decade.

Didion’s journal was crafted with the singular intelligence, precision, and elegance that characterize all of her writing. It is an unprecedently intimate account that reveals sides of her that were unknown, but the voice is unmistakably hers – questioning, courageous, and clear in the face of a wrenchingly painful journey.

'An incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression, and creativity' GUARDIAN

'Written with the immediacy of fresh recollection … and with the cool, forensic clarity she was known for' NEW YORKER

'Compulsive … it shows Didion the reporter at work' TELEGRAPH

'An intimate chronicle … Notes to John offers readers a key to Didion's persona and her work' NPR

'Perhaps for the first time, we can hope to see Didion as she saw the world: unwavering and unflinching, straight down the line' AnOTHER

'An unexpected parting gift to biographers and civilian readers' AIRMAIL

'Fascinating … offers insight into her work and her private life' iPaper

Critics Review

Praise for Notes to John:

‘Utterly fascinating … Notes to John shares with Blue Nights the subject of mother and daughter, generational trauma and general anxiety, and both are written with Didion’s constitutional meticulousness’ The New York Times

‘An incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression, and creativity’ Guardian

‘The most direct book Didion wrote – or rather, pointedly didn’t write … The quantity of arresting and widely applicable insights makes Notes to John a profound, rich document’ New Statesman

‘An act of intimate storytelling … the diehard Didion fans (we know who we are) will feel hypnotized by these pages, not quite sure they should exist as a book, but leveled by the writer who produced them, by her honesty and heartbreak’ Vogue

‘Written with the immediacy of fresh recollection … Readers of her memoirs will recognise how these notes inform those final books—the striving to understand and the sense of futility that comes with it’ New Yorker

‘Makes for uncomfortable but compulsive reading … shows Didion the reporter at work … what an experience it is, watching Didion beat back tragedy with her brilliant mind, as the hurricane hurtles her family’s way’ Telegraph

‘It’s fascinating to see her making connections and presenting evidence of misremembered parts of her past … offers insight into her work and her private life’ iPaper

‘Offers readers a key to Didion’s persona and her work .. Writing was how she processed everything’ NPR

‘Offers an unfiltered glimpse into the mind … perhaps for the first time, we can hope to see Didion as she saw the world: unwavering and unflinching, straight down the line’ AnOther

‘What emerges is the portrait of a life, or lives, in progress … We get the fuller story, so alive and febrile that it is not a story but instead a reckoning with what one can and can’t accept or change’ Alta

‘An unexpected parting gift to biographers and civilian readers … direct and personal, shorn of vanity’ Airmail

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