sam

Beautiful portrait of such a terrible period in Didion's life. She was obviously writing from such a personal place of pain and growth and Didion captured it in all its nuance. Very difficult to read for long periods.

Took me a while to read because it was a little slow/repetitive in the middle. But, I still really liked it!! I've never hated a main character more.

The good parts were REALLY good but overall super long and slow.

This is easily the best book I will never recommend to anyone. It was so real and vivid and beautifully written, but also intensely difficult to get through. The events that take place are so painful for the characters and so graphic in their description that I felt viscerally uncomfortable. While I understand they are supposed to be difficult and supposed to be painful, I also don't think it is something everyone needs to read nor should read. However, this book is so well-written and so human that it took my breath away. I read for hours on end, feeling deeply invested in the lives and traumas of these characters. Their thought processes, decisions, feelings, and actions were so thoroughly explained and described that each character felt so real. I loved this book, but it was also one of the most upsetting and depressing reading experiences. It's not an easy experience to explain.

absolutely brutal and couldn't put it down. took off a star for some gratuitously abusive descriptions but overall a very effectively disturbing horror novel!!