I just finished this book and found it nothing special. I haven't lost a husband but have lost parents and understand the feeling of grief. But Joan Didion didn't say anything new and different here Instead she just dropped names of people and places as she was reliving the death and the year following it. Why should I care that she dined at Morton's? Couldn't she just have written that she dined at a nice restaurant?
This book reads as a journal or diary, valuable to the writer but not to a casual reader. There must be others who have written about the same subject. I agree with the critic who said Didion got by on her name and probably a lot of sympathy about what she went through.