Talk about Newsnight

Thanks for posting this, I really enjoyed the extract. Didion's prose is so precise it is amazing how she can be so exacting and scapel-sharp about something that must have been so confusing and incomprehensible.

Given we are often so divided - pretty often on this blog - we are reminded that loss like this provides a great equivalence.

One to add to my reading list. Thanks.

If anyone saw this story and they can identify the piece of music at the begining - with the initial scenes of people walking the city streets - I would be very very grateful. Sorry if this seems to trivialise the story - not my intention at all.

My husband died of a sudden coronary in August 2003, he was just 34, we'd been married just 3 years and had a daughter who was 7 months old at the time. Joans description of shock was exactly how i felt. I can't wait to read this book. It's nice to find a book that i can relate too. However i found strength within my Daughter who is nearly 4 now, without her i would never have coped. I would like to find out how Joan found her strength.
Tess XX

Joan Didion's sensitivity was spell binding. I just had to read the extract. It was detailed to such a point that one felt you were really involved in the moments. Very powerful. A book to read.

Ten months ago when we had been married for 53 years and courted before that for several years, my wife was killed at my side in our car by a driver ignoring a red light. None of these years of experience in responsible positions with a trained logical mind prepared me for the real nature of grief. Only last evening for no particular reason I was inconsolable in one of these "waves" of which Joan Didion speaks. I too keep many of my wife's belongings knowing that I would have criticized this behaviour in others before. I cannot stress enough how perspicacious this brief extract has shown her to be. Purchase of the book is a must to help me with my grieving future.

I was very moved by the Joan Dideon piece. I am lucky not to have experienced anything like Joan but I know that we will all encounter the loss of a loved one at some point in our lives. This article reminded me that I am very lucky indeed. I am looking forward to reading the book.

Hi Newsnight. Just to say how much I was touched by Dilion's book, she seemed to encapsulate, many of my own feelings in the death and illness of my family, only she is better than expressing the traumas that happened (to me)and to her, one after another. With congratulations to the way Kirsty's delicate approach to the story. A book I must read. Regards, Jenifer W.