The Year of Magical Thinking has been around for a couple of years now; some may be familiar with the stage adaption of the novel. It is an intensely personal account of the pain of loss, by the celebrated journalist Joan Didion.

I have always loved Didion's writing. Her non-fiction collections of essays: The White Album and Slouching to Bethlehem are a celebration of the New Journalism style she pioneered. She was among the first to immerse herself in her subject matter rather than maintaining a charade of aloof objectivity.

Didion did not have a choice about whether or not to immerse herself in this subject matter. With her daughter in hospital with complications after the flu, and her husband collapsing in their apartment, pain and loss and grief were subjects that chose her.

I suspect a friend sent me this book because of my own encounter with sudden disaster: my daughter was diagnosed with leukaemia at age 6. However, this book would be applicable to anyone who has been affected by accident, sickness, divorce, retrenchment, death of a loved one" It is an opportunity to journey through that experience with a fresh set of eyes.

I related to the feeling of being an alien, transported out of ordinary events, out of the familiar; as well as the thirst for knowledge and understanding. Didion applies her considerable research skills to the subject of loss and grief, and provides a personal angle to the studies and statistics quoted.

She comments on the lack of resources available for those struggling with grief, although does quote from the wonderful A Grief Observed by CS Lewis, a journal written in the tumultuous months following the death of his wife Joy Davidman. While very different books, they complement each other. For Didion only dances around spiritual and existential questions, while Lewis plunges right into the depths.

Didion fears that life has been frittered away, and is struck by the "impassable divide" between life and death. She seeks new meaning in the words, activities and habits of her loved ones.

Although exquisitely, hauntingly, even passionately written" there is a lack of hope and a lack of comfort in Didion's book. At the end, Didion seems horribly alone. In contrast, Lewis tracks a path through grief that begins with pity for himself, then adoration for his missed wife, and finally he focuses on God and finds a context in which his love and loss find their place, or at least are "less misunderstood" by himself and others.

Where Didion does excel is in cataloging the emotional, mental and social characteristics of grief and loss. In the midst of my own pain, a friend who was going through divorce described the situation as having all your relationships and possessions and activities placed on a giant blanket, which is then used to toss them in the air. At first there is chaos and falling. Then things come back to earth, but everything has shifted, nothing is the same. Didion describes in detail the process of dealing with the chaos, and renegotiating all the changes; and does so with compassion. Her appreciation of what has been lost is a salutary reminder to cherish all that we have around us.