#85 in Biography & memoir
Blue Nights
- 188
- Pages
- about 3.5 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 2 weeks on the list, peaked at #6
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About the book
Blue Nights is a memoir written by American author Joan Didion, first published in 2011. The memoir is an account of the death of Didion's daughter, Quintana, who died in 2005 at age 39. Didion also discusses her own feelings on parenthood and aging. The title refers to certain times in the "summer solstice [...] when the twilights turn long and blue." Blue Nights is notable for its "nihilistic" attitude towards grief as Didion offers little understanding or explanation of her daughter's death. Writing for The New York Review of Books, Cathleen Schine said,"'We tell ourselves stories in order to live,' Didion famously wrote in The White Album. Blue Nights is about what happens when there are no more stories we can tell ourselves, no narrative to guide us and make sense out of the chaos, no order, no meaning, no conclusion to the tale."
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.5 across 55 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 27% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Biography & memoir average of 8.1. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.5 | 55 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is Blue Nights?
It has 188 pages — shorter than 93% of the ranked books in Biography & memoir.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Biography & memoir — with scores between 7.9 and 8.0, closest to this book.
