Notes to John Audiobook By Joan Didion cover art

Notes to John

Preview
Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Notes to John

By: Joan Didion
Narrated by: Julianne Moore
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.00

Buy for $18.00

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

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.

©2025 Joan Didion (P)2025 Random House Audio
Art & Literature Authors Essays Mental Health
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_webcro805_stickypopup

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

All stars
Most relevant  
Superb reading from Julianne Moore. Beautiful story of pain, sorrow, love, what it takes to build a family, how it is to be a mother.

Beautiful, just beautiful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

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.

So sad…

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

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

Julianne Moore’s sensitive narration

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Julianne read beautifully
Joan reported dutifully
The pain of alcoholism in a family
Amazing view into Ms Didion’s dauntless courage
in the psychiatric journey she underwent at the hands of a master

Joan Didion’s road through a personal hell

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

To me this is the truest work Didion ever wrote. Her other works edited and stylized which is fine but at certain level not truthful. These notes are not to be read only once but thought about, argued with and a thing of comfort for those struggling with addiction and/or know some one who is. These notes in conjunction with Magical Thinking and Blue NIghts give deeper insight into Didion and grief as well. I do believe that even though the doctor Didion was seeing was celebrated, he did not serve her well in a lot of ways. I love Julianne Moore’s work as an actress and reader but I did find that she took some time to get into an authentic reading which is why i gave performance 4 stars but overall she did a beautiful reading. Just my opinion…read it and form your own.

Whatever to the naysayers…this is an important book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The struggles of a mother who wants to get her daughter sober are brutally honest and very well written. Joan’s willingness to dive into her her own psyche in effort to maintain a good relationship with her alcoholic/drug addicted daughter are incredibly brave and painful as she traces behavioral coping mechanisms passed on from generation to generation. Julianne Moore’s performances are outstanding.

This autobiography discusses notes from therapy regarding Joan’s daughter’s addiction. Very insightful!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

1,) The author sets up a dichotomy about alcoholism by characterizing it as a.) disease which can be treated by abstinence and


What stood out most?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Hearing Joan’s thoughts & how they echo my own is affirming. She lived & survived tragedy & lived still. I am still figuring that out.

Glimpses of a life lived

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

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.

Not what I expected

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.