Although I thought it was a stylistic masterpiece, the characters were opaque to me and their motivations incomprehensible. I still don't quite know what the story was either. ( )

Difficult book to evaluate. It clearly was shocking in it's time and perhaps groundbreaking. The depiction of a very particular moment in a very particular scene in Los Angeles touched something that many reader felt to be true or maybe exposed something that of period when peace and love died, giving way to a vast emptiness of values or ideas. It is a difficult read in the sense that the characters are unlikeable and the action sparse. There are few ideas explored here. It is an easy read in the sense that it is very short. In fact many chapters aren't even a page long. It feels like most of the book is made up of empty spaces and it's hard not to see that as intentional. The subject matter can be boring, but you'll find a very elegant turn of phrase or connection to something happening beneath the surface. I don't think this is a work that deserves too much exultation for explaining or imagining LA nor does it make me want to read more of Didion's work. However, it is an unusual style. I can see the appeal for other readers. ( )

4.8/5 ( )

Somehow not what I was expecting. I wish that there had been a little more about what the problem with Kate was and how Carter had behaved during the time between Kate's birth and her institutionalization (hospitalization?). Was Kate autistic? There were some hints that this may have been the situation but nothing definitive... ( )

I am not much engaged by the problems of what you might call our day but I am burdened by the particular, the mad person who writes me a letter. It is no longer necessary for them even to write me. I know when someone is thinking of me. I learn to deal with this.

A portrait of disaffection, disillusion, and dissociation told in masterful prose—fragmented, hallucinatory, confounding, maddening—that mimics the protagonist's malaise and unraveling.

As relevant now as it was when it was published: this is a journey we've all taken; this is the journey of America—whether you live in it, whether you dream of it, whether you despite it, it's all here, wizardly so. ( )