The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

Laurel Gray Hamilton’s life begins to unravel when the ghost of her daughter’s best friend visits her. Needing help, she turns to her tempestuous older sister, Thalia. The two are polar opposites as far as their lifestyles and temperaments and they clash head on. Laurel is a mild suburban wife with a rather distracted husband. They live in a community of manicured lawns and apparent perfection. Thalia and her gay husband run a small theater. Thalia despises her sister's life and Laurel does not understand Thalia's. Yet they share a love of Laurel's daughter, Shelby, and each in their way strives to protect her. Bet, Shelby's visiting pen pal from DeLop plays a pivotal role.

The author says the central theme of her book concerns poverty, but the poverty is not just literal, it is the poverty of relationships that are not honest, and the poverty of living a blinkered life. There are also many secrets being harbored, in the family, in the neighborhood, and what is on the surface is not always the same as what lies beneath. Location is also important. Victorianna, where Laurel lives is supposedly a middle class paradise, DeLop, a dirt poor collection of run down houses next to an abandoned mine, reflects literal poverty and is the place that Laurel & Thalia's mother escaped from when she married their father. Ghosts also play a role, Molly, the drowned girl, and Uncle Marty who was shot. Are the ghosts real or imagined? You decide.

The Abingdon Library book group read this novel for October. It prompted a lot of discussion. It was interesting and raised many issues. Secrets, ghosts, how we dispense charity, relationships, honesty, how we approach life.

For book groups and interested readers, there is a very good blog of discussion questions written by a teacher called Mary Zorro. See her blog at http://booksiread-zorro.blogspot.com/2008/06/girl-who-stopped-swimming.html

Jackson wrote a previous novel called Gods in Alabama and prior to that, Between, Georgia. Both books were No. 1 Booksense Picks and made her the first author to win this accolade with back to back titles. She currently lives with her family outside Atlanta. For more about the author and her books go to her website at http://joshilynjackson.com/bio.html.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

I have just finished reading this book for my book club. We should have plenty to talk about when we get together to discuss this surpassingly well-written examination of grief.

Joan Didion, acclaimed essayist, novelist and screenwriter, describes the first year of mourning and grief she experiences after her husband of forty years drops dead at the dinner table on December 30, 2003. The circumstances are made even more dreadful because her daughter is at that time in hospital in a coma suffering from pneumonia and septic shock. Joan cannot begin her grieving properly because she cannot tell Quintana of the death of her father until she wakes up in hospital some weeks later and the funeral cannot be held until Quintana can attend. Very soon another disaster strikes, when Quintana suffers an embolism as a result of her previous illness and for a time is again in a coma.

Didion employs several sorts of magical thinking in order to postpone grief and remain the “cool customer” she appeared to be to the social worker in the hospital. She needs to know the exact circumstances of her husband, John Gregory Dunne’s death, so that by thinking about what she could have done to save him, she might undo his death. She refuses to throw away John’s shoes, because that would be to admit the possibility that he won’t need them again. Didion uses her novelist’s research skills to find out everything known about the process of grieving, so that she can understand what she is experiencing; but this does not prevent her from realising that she is actually mad, and grief comes in waves to attack her. These waves are the occasion of reminiscences of her life with John and of Quintana’s childhood, which become a penetrating examination of the nature of marriage and of motherhood.

I recommend it to anyone who enjoys, good, spare prose, depictions of emotions that truly resonate though they are described without hyperbole, and honest and open personal memoirs. I would think twice about recommending The Year of Magical Thinking to anyone who is grieving. Though Didion recognizes that she is going through the well-documented stages of grief, this is not a hopeful book. It took me a while to realize why I was sad and slightly angry that week I was reading the book. I was feeling grief too, for all the people who must grieve; yet I made sure I finished the book.

Here is what some reviewers said:
“she chronicles a year of grief with her signature blend of intellectual rigor and deep feeling.” (Booklist starred review)
“Didion describes with compelling precision exactly how grief feels, and how it impairs rational thought and triggers "magical thinking." The result is a remarkably lucid and ennobling anatomy of grief, matched by a penetrating tribute to marriage, motherhood, and love.” (Booklist)
“the predominant atmosphere is one of authentic suspense that makes for a remarkable page-turner. As always, Didion's writing style is sheer and highly efficient.” (Library Journal)
“the book reverberates with passion and even, occasionally, ironic humor” (Book Page Reviews)
“As a poignant and ultimately doomed effort to deny reality through fiction, that magical thinking has much in common with the delusions Didion has chronicled in her several previous collections of essays. But perhaps because it is a work of such intense personal emotion, this memoir lacks the mordant bite of her earlier work.” (Kirkus)
“In a sense, all of Didion's fiction, with its themes of loss and bereavement, served as preparation for the writing of this memoir, and there is occasionally a curious hint of repetition, despite the immediacy and intimacy of the subject matter. Still, this is an indispensable addition to Didion's body of work and a lyrical, disciplined entry in the annals of mourning literature.” (PW Reviews)

Click here for some discussion questions for the book.