The Last Love Song

Reviews

“Daugherty gives us six hundred pages of excellent literary criticism and painstaking detail about her personal life.”

“A comprehensive, absorbing look at the life of iconic author Joan Didion…by a top-notch biographer.”

“Thoughtful and ambitious…his biography evinces a deep appreciation of her skills and idiosyncrasies…Mr. Daugherty expertly dissects Ms. Didion’s preoccupation with narratives—not just with the techniques of storytelling but also with the subtexts undergirding the personal and political story lines mapped in her work.”

“If you’ve ever wondered what goes on inside the mind of Joan Didion, you’ll love biographer Tracy Daugherty’s juicy tell-all.”

“Daugherty tasks himself with separating the version of Didion we’ve come to know through her work from the real one and determining whether ‘the life reveal[s] the art, or the art the life’…He has a firm, clear grasp on her writing—how it evolved, how it fits into (and helped shape) the landscape of American literature, how her language illuminates her worldview…the book conjures as vivid a picture of this living legend as we are likely to get.”

“Compelling…What Daugherty does exceptionally well is conjure a psychic atmosphere, grounding our understanding of Didion in her child-of-the-West perspective.”

“Growing up in Sacramento, Didion imagined being a writer,‘which usually involved having a quote unquote Manhattan penthouse. This hefty work is the first of the literary icon ever written.”

“If you want a taste for what it was like to be a high-flying journalist at the apex of New Journalism and a lauded screenwriter during a Hollywood golden age, or if you just want to know the gossip behind all the troubled marriage innuendos haunting The White Album, then this is your book.”

“The Last Love Song is a smart and gratifying book that gives us Didion’s world and brings us closer to her way of seeing it.”

“Didion lovers, of whom there are many, will find [The Last Love Song] enjoyable.”

“Engaging…If we are accustomed to thinking of Didion as the moody, stylish intellectual—nervous and frail and more alluring for it—a broader picture emerges here of a fighter and analyst, a very hard worker and a bit of a badass.”

“A full, vibrant picture of Didion…Daugherty’s book ultimately succeeds because of his ability to see Didion not as an immutable icon of cool, but as someone whose ideas and whose writing shifted constantly, radically.”

“In this engrossing biography of exceptional vibrancy, velocity, and perception, Daugherty astutely elucidates Didion’s ever-evolving artistic explorations and political critiques as she interrogates the meaning and ‘intelligibility’ of literature and life. He also portrays this intensely candid, searching writer as endlessly hardworking, brilliantly innovative, and as sensitive as a tuning fork or divining rod, trembling with the intensity of it all, perfect in pitch, stunning in revelation.”

“An eloquent work on the life of Joan Didion, fashioning her story as no less than the rupture of the American narrative…[a] wonderfully engaging biography.”

“A monumental, novelistic examination of Joan Didion’s life and career…Daugherty crafts a complex, intricately shaded portrait of a woman also known for her inner toughness and intellectual rigor. This landmark work renders a nuanced analysis of a literary life, lauds Didion’s indelible contributions to American literature and journalism (especially new journalism), and documents a ‘style [that] has become the music of our time.’”

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