The end of promise

BLUE NIGHTS are the long, twilight evenings that help define midsummer. To most, they conjure notions of romance and serenity, but for Joan Didion they know a different timbre, warning of things to come, “the dwindling of days, the end of promise”.

For half a century Miss Didion has been one of the most distinctive and intelligent voices in American Letters. In 2005, she wrote a highly acclaimed memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, which dealt with the death of her husband, the novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne. By the time of publication, she was also grieving the loss of their only child, their 39-year-old daughter, Quintana Roo. Blue Nights is a sequel of sorts, yet it would be wrong to dismiss it as mere addendum.