"You have wonderful memories," people said later, as if memories were solace. Memories are not. Memories are by definition of times past, things gone. Memories are the Westlake uniforms in the closet, the faded and cracked photographs, the invitations to weddings of people who are no longer married, the mass cards from the funerals of the people whose faces you no longer remember. Memories are what you no longer want to remember.

I read The Year of Magical Thinking a couple of years ago now and it was a perfect introduction to the world of Joan Didion. I've been meaning to get around to this memoir for a while now but I've been kind of waiting for my heart to heal a bit from my last experience.

Blue Nights documents Didion's grief in the wake of the death of her daughter, Quintana, who died shortly after her husband, John. Losing her husband and child in such close proximity to one another obviously took a massive toll on Didion emotionally and physically, and she explores this in both of her memoirs though I would say that this book in particular looks at the way the memories of our loved ones can haunt us when they pass away.

The Year of Magical Thinking felt more constructed, it felt tighter and that it had a direction, whereas Blue Nights feels more lost, drifting in a strange limbo between past and present, and there are moments that echo throughout the book. Things that Quintana said as a child crop up again and again, and Didion begins to frantically dissect them, as though trying to ascertain what her child's inner world was and how she as a mother featured in it. Didion examines parenthood and what it means to adopt a child, trying to locate her oversights and what she would change if given the chance. There are questions left unanswered, large fragments of Quintana's life that are still a mystery to her, and that's probably the most heartbreaking thing about Blue Nights. This book felt more abstract in comparison with Didion's other novel and I think it's fair to assume that that comes from the overwhelming shock and the senselessness of losing a child. She seemed to be able to distance herself a little bit in The Year of Magical Thinking, analysing what grief was and how physical the act of mourning is, whereas Blue Nights feels intensely personal. How can anyone assign order and complete cohesion to something so unfathomable?

It's an incredibly brief book and it's fast to read but it's extremely intricate and I don't deny that there are probably things in here that I missed on my first reading. Didion's writing always calls for some excavating. I always find Didion's name dropping a bit overwhelming and simultaneously impressive - it's understandable because these are the people who populate her life, these are her friends and peers and colleagues, but it does always somewhat take me out of the book.

Overall, I found this a really raw, engaging memoir and I think I'll walk away with even more on my second read.