Notes to John

By: Joan Didion

Narrated by: Julianne Moore

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An extraordinary work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights

In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.” She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods. There were discussions about her own childhood—misunderstandings and lack of communication with her mother and father, her early tendency to anticipate catastrophe—and the question of legacy, or, as she put it, “what it’s been worth.” The analysis would continue for more than a decade.

Didion’s journal was crafted with the singular intelligence, precision, and elegance that characterize all of her writing. It is an unprecedently intimate account that reveals sides of her that were unknown, but the voice is unmistakably hers—questioning, courageous, and clear in the face of a wrenchingly painful journey.

Critic reviews

"Utterly fascinating. . . . Notes to John shares with Blue Nights the subject of mother and daughter, generational trauma and general anxiety, and both are written with Didion's constitutional meticulousness." —The New York Times

"More than direct, Notes to John is naked, unadorned. It's Didion but 'unprecedentedly intimate,' just as the copy on the book jacket promises." —The Atlantic

“An intimate chronicle of [Didion’s] struggle to help her daughter. . . . Written with her signature precision though without her usual stylistic, incantatory repetitions, it is the least guarded of Didion’s writing.” —NPR

“A tour de force from one of the best." —People

“Full of direct quotations and written with the immediacy of fresh recollection. . . . Readers of her memoirs will recognize how these notes inform those final books—the striving to understand and the sense of futility that comes with it.” —The New Yorker

"An act of intimate storytelling. . . . Didion fans (we know who we are) will feel hypnotized by these pages, not quite sure they should exist as a book, but leveled by the writer who produced them, by her honesty and heartbreak." —Vogue

"For all its rawness, its sense of open-endedness, Notes to John has the feeling of an integrated work. . . . We get the fuller story, so alive and febrile that it is not a story but instead a reckoning with what one can and can't accept or change." —Alta

"Notes to John makes for compulsive reading. . . . What an experience it is, watching Didion beat back tragedy with her brilliant mind." —The Telegraph

"The quantity of arresting and widely applicable insight makes Notes to John a profound, rich document. . . . Didion herself has rarely seemed so sympathetic in her own writing." —The New Statesman

"[Didion's] previously unpublished notes from her sessions with a psychiatrist offer an incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression, and creativity." —The Guardian

So sad…

It is a look into a mother-daughter relationship hindered by addiction. It’s sad but very matter of fact, straightforward, in true Joan Didion way.

Great insight into therapy

Honest views of life dealing with alcoholism and family. More intimate than most can imagine; feedback from a renowned psychiatrist. Could be helpful to many!

Not what I expected

I love Joan Didion, but this book was pretty repetitious as well as depressing. Didion and her husband were in such a difficult time in their lives with their daughter Quintanna that it seemed as though things would never get any better. And, as it turned out, they didn't. I almost wish I hadn't read it.

Julianne Moore’s sensitive narration

The truthful, vulnerable experience Didion had navigating her daughter’s alcoholism as well as the intelligence of the psychiatrist

Very moving

The to-the-bone raw honesty of Didion’s words once again unravelled me. Her landscapes of living with the fear and love of, losing her most beloveds and the subsequent grief and mourning she experienced has helped me understand myself in very consequential ways - as a patient, a parent, a patient advocate and a daughter. If you are enamored with Didion, it is a must read.