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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Utterly fascinating’
NEW YORK TIMES

‘A profound, rich document’
NEW STATESMAN

‘An act of intimate storytelling’
VOGUE

A recently 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, longstanding behaviour patterns, marriage, guilt, 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 reading … what an experience it is, watching Didion beat back tragedy with her brilliant mind’
TELEGRAPH

‘An incredibly intimate insight into her relationship with her daughter, depression and creativity’
GUARDIAN

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

‘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

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

Publisher Review

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

‘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

‘A profound, rich document’ New Statesman

‘An act of intimate storytelling … the diehard Didion fans (we know who we are) will feel hypnotized by these pages’ Vogue

‘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

‘Has a candour which refutes any charges of exploitation’ Julian Barnes, author of Departure(s), in the New Statesman

‘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