
Notes to John
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Narrated by:
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Julianne Moore
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By:
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Joan Didion
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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















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
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So sad…
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I didn't want it to end
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Beautiful, just beautiful
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Julianne Moore is phenomenal as a narrator, i wish she would narrate Blue Nights by Didion as well ..
Devastatingly beautiful, superb narration
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Julianne Moore’s sensitive narration
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Very moving
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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
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Whatever to the naysayers…this is an important book
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Very very sad
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This autobiography discusses notes from therapy regarding Joan’s daughter’s addiction. Very insightful!
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