Notes to John

A previously unpublished work from one of America's most iconic writers, Joan Didion, the author of The Year of Magical Thinking.

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.

'Full of direct quotations and written with the immediacy of fresh recollection' New Yorker

Praise for Joan Didion:

‘To read Joan Didion is to understand what writing, at its most exquisitely controlled, can do’ Vogue

'A precise, human and meticulously truthful writer' Zadie Smith

'A voice like no other' New York Times Book Review

Reviews

Praise for Notes to John:

'Full of direct quotations and written with the immediacy of fresh recollection … Readers of her memoirs will recognize how these notes inform those final books – the striving to understand and the sense of futility that comes with it' New Yorker

Praise for Joan Didion:

‘To read Joan Didion is to understand what writing, at its most exquisitely controlled, can do’ Vogue

‘One of the most celebrated American writers of her generation … one of our sharpest and most respected observers of American politics and culture’ Barack Obama

‘A chronicler of our world’ TIME

'A precise, human and meticulously truthful writer' Zadie Smith

'Our quintessential essayist' LA Times

'A voice like no other' New York Times Book Review

'This is the miracle of Joan Didion, that she attests to the disorder and dismay of life with absolute elegance and clarity, a vision of bedlam carved out of pearl' Olivia Laing, Sunday Times

About the author

JOAN DIDION was the author of five novels, twelve books of nonfiction, a play and many screenplays. She was born in California. She died at her home in New York City on 23 December 2021.