Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Didion's 1983 volume captured "the terror and unpredictability permeating the El Salvadorean scene," said LJ's reviewer (LJ 3/1/83). Though political events in El Salvador are no longer in the public eye, this serves as a chronicle of a dark chapter in that country's tumultuous history. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kirkus Book Review

Anyone who has read accounts of Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia or junta-ruled Argentina (Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia) will recognize the ""mechanisms of terror"" Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne found on a two-week visit to El Salvador in June 1982. One doesn't have to visit a body dump or the San Salvador morgue to know about the daily killings. One needn't even have lunch with US ambassador Deane Hinton--crystal glasses, profiteroles--to realize that we've been fooling ourselves, with their complicity: ""trying to get the Salvadoran government to 'appear' to do what the American government wanted done in order to make it 'appear' that the American aid was justified."" And that, for the Salvadoran part, ""'anti-communism' was seen, correctly, as the bait the United States would always take."" In the light of the last half-century, it can't be argued that attention-getting Americans like Didion shouldn't add their denunciations to what human rights organizations (Amnesty International, the American Watch Committee) have documented and the press has reported. Press attention, in particular, constantly shifts--bringing a much-remarked end, Didion notes, to the Hotel Camino Real's breakfast buffet. Such precise observations are rare, however (though not entirely absent--re Ambassador Hinton: ""Someone who is about to marry a third time, who thinks of himself as the father of ten, and who has spent much of his career in chancy posts . . . is apt to be someone who believes in the possible""). Much that is said about El Salvador--from the ""elusive shadows"" to the ersatz ethnic dances--could equally be said about other such situations. And Didion's dry runs, her admission of how hard it is to find out anything--combined with her professed intent to learn ""la verdad,"" as if the truth were ascertainable (even with more time and broader contacts)--make this a document of passing interest, better suited to its original publication in the New York Review. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Born in Sacramento, California, on December 5, 1934, Joan Didion received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1956. She wrote for Vogue from 1956 to 1963, and was visiting regent's lecturer in English at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976.

Didion also published novels, short stories, social commentary, and essays. Her work often comments on social disorder. Didion wrote for years on her native California; from there her perspective broadened and turned to the countries of Central America and Southeast Asia.

Her novels include Democracy (1984) and The Last Thing He Wanted (1996). Well known nonfiction titles include Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), The White Album (1979), The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) and Blue Nights (2011). In 1971 Joan Didion was nominated for the National Book Award in fiction for Play It As It Lays. In 1981 she received the American Book Award in nonfiction, and was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Prize in nonfiction for The White Album.

Didion has received a great deal of recognition for The Year of Magical Thinking, which was awarded the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005. In 2007, Didion received the National Book Foundation's annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2009, Didion was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Harvard University. On July 3, 2013 the White House announced Didion was one of the recipients of the National Medals of Arts and Humanities presented by President Barack Obama.

(Bowker Author Biography)