Welcome to Litsy!

The narrator is also the author of this unusual fictional story, being portrayed as a true nonfiction biography of the wife, Inez Victor, of a senator. She (assuming the narrator is a she) tells the story according to the events she learns her information about Inez. As a result it is told out of chronological order, but in “real time” as the narrator interviews Inez and many others and reads news articles and documents, etc. In other words, ⬇️

#wordoftheday

“This seems astonishing now, but we forget how confused and febrile those few weeks in 1975 actually were, the “reassessments” and the “calculated gambles” and the infusions of supplemental aid giving way even as they were reported to the lurid phantasmagoria of air lifts and marines on the roof and stranded personnel and tarmacs littered with shoes and broken toys.”

#authoramonth @Soubhiville Joan just keeps on giving.

A new #wordoftheday

“Intermission at the ballet, one of those third-string touring companies that afford the women and children and dutiful providers of small cities an annual look at … “Nutcracker”; an occasion, a benefit, a reason to dress up after the general fretfulness of the season and the specific lassitude of the holiday and stand outside beneath an improvised canopy drinking champagne from paper cups.”

#authoramonth @Soubhiville

#wordoftheday

#authoramonth @Soubhiville

Women: imagine needing to supply a husband‘s information or worse needing his permission for such things!!

#authoramonth @Soubhiville

#wordoftheday

“Her attention was entirely fixed on the man who sat across the table, a stranger, considerably older than we were and notably uncomfortable in the rather louche camaraderie of the studio.”

#authoramonth @Soubhiville

I started this my first book for #authoramonth. @Soubhiville

#ranttime Time for us to put our money where our mouths have been. ✊🏻💙✊🏻

https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/event/786191/

I enjoyed the documentary “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” much more than I enjoyed this book. This documentary is available for streaming and on DVD on Netflix. It is well worth a watch.

“Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation. A sense of anxiety or dread permeates much of her work.” I never really connected to this story or any of the characters. Her writing style, at least in this book, is not for me. #1001books

My IRL book group is having a "read anything by Joan Didion" month. I've started with this one and I think it was a good choice. She takes meta fiction to a new level by making herself,as the writer, the narrator of the novel and comments not only on the action as it takes place but also the decisions she makes in presenting it. The story itself is fairly slight, but the background of domestic and international politics is fascinating.

Listen to @strandbookstore and ✌🏻ote! #ElectionDay

This is a curious story, told in jigsaw fashion, of how life lived in the public eye distorts reality. Each puzzle piece is an image or a perfect moment, but presented out of order and repeated if a second piece illuminates an earlier one. The author also discusses the difficulty in shaping the story and the other novels that could be told.

I am not sure I understood the plot, but the writing is so phenomenal that I don't care.
4.5 🌟 #1001

#AprilBookShowers Day 11 - Set in SE Asia

Published in the US in 1984, Didion's slim novel takes the reader from Malaysia to Vietnam, and then across the Pacific to Hawaii.

Also, can we have a moment for this unbelievably 80's author photo on the back cover 💯👌