Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have always loved Joan Didion, to the point that I thought she could do no wrong. I would await each new book with absolutely no hesitation that I might not enjoy it. The same happened when I received "Blue Nights" and I launched right into it with the comfortable knowledge that I would surely love it. About halfway through, I realized the biggest reaction I was having to the book was annoyance. Ms. Didion, while clearly distraught by her daughter's untimely death, seems to be too self-conscious of how she herself comes across in the book, making sure to share more n enough detail about how fabulous and successful her life has been. Quintana Roo, as I fear might be the case in real life, seems to be an afterthought, someone who provides some funny quips for her mother to use in her writing. Quintana Roo seems to me like a little girl desperately wanting her parents to love her and include her, apparent in such stories like her daughter's "sundries" or her "cancer diagnosis" (chicken pox). I think theone part that confirmed for me that DIdion is no longer accessible to her readers is when she oh-so-delightfully explains how on all the trips they would take Quintana Roo on, her daughter didn't understand what it meant to be "on expenses" and "not on expenses." How dare a little girl not realize that when a big studio is picking up the tab, you can order caviar, but when your parents have to actually spend their own money, you can't spoil yourself with othe people's money? What an adorable tale to relay to the everyman reader! Didion has lost me at this point. As another reviewer noted, I would love to know more about Quintana Roo, but maybe it's someone else's job to tell us about her, someone who won't be so self-aware of her own portrayal in the story as is clearly the case with this author.