
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion · 2005
Didion's husband died at the dinner table. Within the year her daughter would die too. She wrote about grief with the precision of a scientist and the rawness of a child, cataloguing the magical thinking the mind uses to resist the unacceptable. Changed what it is possible to write about loss.
Memoir · the Pro canon
The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.