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Notes to John

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Notes to John

By: Joan Didion
Narrated by: Julianne Moore
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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Utterly fascinating’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘An act of intimate storytelling’ VOGUE

‘A profound, rich document’ NEW STATESMAN

A deeply moving, newly discovered journal from one of America’s most iconic writers, Joan Didion, the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights.

A pile of neatly typed pages was found in Joan Didion’s office after her death. She had meticulously recorded her weekly sessions with a psychiatrist. As far as anyone knows, the pages had been read by only one other person: Didion’s husband, John Gregory Dunne.

The sessions began as a method of dealing with the heartbreaking alcoholism of their adult daughter, Quintana. Discussions broadened into revelations about Didion's own childhood, marriage, work and ‘what’s been worth’.

Writing was the way Didion dealt with life. Notes to John presents a riveting account of the therapeutic process, crafted with the singular intelligence, precision and elegance that characterise all of her work.

‘Compulsive … what an experience it is, watching Didion beat back tragedy with her brilliant mind’ TELEGRAPH

‘So moving … a record of trying to save a life, and understand her own’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘An incredibly intimate insight’ GUARDIAN

‘A chance to meet Didion's gaze head-on, eye to eye, with only a waft of cigarette smoke breaking the silence’ ANOTHER

‘An intimate chronicle … offers readers a key to Didion's persona and her work’ NPR

‘A tour de force from one of the best’ PEOPLE

'Notes to John' was a New York Times bestseller w/c 2025-04-28.

©2025 The Didion Dunne Literary Trust (P)2025 Penguin Random House LLC. Art & Literature Authors Diaries & Journals Grief & Loss Marriage & Long-Term Partnerships Memoirs, Diaries & Correspondence Personal Development Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Relationships Adoption New York Mental Health
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Critic reviews

Praise for Notes to John:
‘Utterly fascinating … shares with Blue Nights the subject of mother and daughter, generational trauma and general anxiety, and both are written with Didion's constitutional meticulousness’ New York Times
'An incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression, and creativity' Guardian
‘An act of intimate storytelling … the diehard Didion fans (we know who we are) will feel hypnotized by these pages’ Vogue
‘Raw and intimate … An unfiltered stream of brutal self-examination from a writer who was painfully conscious about shaping her public image’ New York Times Book Review
‘Has a candour which refutes any charges of exploitation’ Julian Barnes, author of Departure(s), in the New Statesman
‘A profound, rich document’ New Statesman
‘Written with the immediacy of fresh recollection … Readers of her memoirs will recognise how these notes inform those final books – the striving to understand and the sense of futility that comes with it’ New Yorker
‘It’s fascinating to see her making connections and presenting evidence of misremembered parts of her past … offers insight into her work’ iPaper
‘‘An unfiltered and unrestrained glimpse into domestic distress, the unavoidable guilt of motherhood, and the great burden of legacy’ The Nation
‘A tour de force from one of the best’ People
‘A valuable glance behind the scenes, a study of how her outlook, and the weight of her talent, factored into life off the page’ Irish Independent
‘An unfiltered glimpse into the mind of the New Journalism poster girl’AnOther
‘Much of Notes to John will feel familiar to anyone who’s coped with a loved one cycling between recovery and relapses. Her notes capture the maddening, circular nature of this dilemma’ Slate
‘A reckoning with what one can and can't accept or change’ Alta
‘An unexpected parting gift to biographers and civilian readers … direct and personal, shorn of vanity’ Air Mail
All stars
Most relevant
I love Didion’s writing, and part of her pull is the enigmatic tension between laying her thoughts out with clarity and keeping the reader at something of a distance, wanting to know more about her. I resisted reading this for a long time because I think there’s a privacy issue at play, but the draw to learn more about her was too strong. Julianne Moore’s voice has the same cool drawl as Didion’s but I did feel it was slightly flat.

It’s ultimately a tragic story, the bulk of the content being about her daughter, her alcoholism and subsequent illness, and really made me feel for the the author as a struggling mother despite her sparkling career.

Mixed feelings

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If Joan didion wanted this published she would have done it herself seeing as she wrote these notes in the early 2000s. I think showcasing her private therapy notes is incredibly invasive and in all honestly it’s not really very interesting. Her relationships with her husband and daughter were very personal to her. And it feels a little icky listening to her private thoughts like this.

Invasive

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