Would recommend: Maybe

I expected this account of the author's grief over her husband's sudden death to be really wrenching, but she was more displaced and clinical than weeping and keening. In a way, it was startling, but also mildly comforting, because I could relate to her pragmatic confrontation with the facts: she read scientific studies, examined the autopsy report, etc. That's not to say that the narrative is cold or unfeeling; it's more that the author demonstrates how disoriented grief rendered her -- the "magical thinking" in the title.

Throughout the book, she repeats certain lines that resonated with her ("You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."), and I think this device could be irritating to some, but for me, it illustrated the wavelike properties of grief and illustrated how she was revisiting the same types of thoughts as she processed everything.

Overall, I think this book was very thought-provoking, but not necessarily earth-shattering. I wouldn't recommend reading it immediately after a loss, but then, as this author contends, there is no time after a death that does not seem immediate.