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A bracing alternative to the wailing bathos we tend to expect from the grieving (certainly a valid response that many adopt) But for some of us grief settles in the tiniest of details in the following months. Didion talks of feeling invisible, incorporeal - of being remarked as a "cool customer." And maybe it's a bit of that steely resolve that needs to be deployed as she tends to an ailing only child that would die a year or so after the book was published. It left me feeling a bit breathless, this tightrope walk between the loss of her husband and the anxiety of tending to her only child's illness in the wake of that loss. Granted, given our current class consciousness it can reek of privilege, of connection, and globe trotting recollections. Didion is privy to an access of care and consideration that is alien to most of us in our current climate and that distance feels sharp. Nonetheless, I appreciated the cool incisive prose bent to navigating this liminal, crazy-making space grief can land us in.