South and West

JOAN DIDION is the author of five novels and nine books of nonfiction, including The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. Born in Sacramento, California, Didion now lives in New York City.

'Didion at her most fascinatingly unfiltered, recording folksy vernacular at a motel pool, having G & Ts with Walker Percy, and searching fruitlessly for Faulkner's grave in an Oxford cemetery ... her riffs on everything from Gertrude Atherton to crossing the Golden Gate bridge for the first time in three-inch heels captures the thrill of a writer discovering her richest subject: the American mythologies that governed her own romantic girlhood, a yearning for an MGM-style heritage that never really was - a yearning that feels freshly perilous in its delusions.' Vogue

'Every era needs better criticism ... And so it's been a relief to read [South and West], investigating the South and its "vertiginous preoccupation with race, class, heritage, style and the absence of style"' Adam Thirlwell, TLS, Books of the Year

'Let your heart skip a beat. For here be new writing from the mind behind The Year of Magical Thinking and The White Album - Joan Didion. But this isn't just for Didionites ... For an understanding of certain parts of modern America, it still has eerie resonance ... An insight into the process of a writer who can truly be referred to as an icon' Emerald Street

'A compelling book - rooted utterly in a past now all but lost to us, while also incredibly timely and relevant ... It bears the hallmarks of Didion's sparkling prose' Los Angeles Review of Books

'You'll learn more about America's future from Didion's 40-year-old field notes than you will from tomorrow's newspaper' Esquire

'There's a universal rule against reading someone else's diary - but in this case, it's not just OK, it's required reading' Marie Claire

'The power of Didion's work is on striking display in this slender volume ... Didion's notes are remarkably polished and slicing; they shimmer with dark implications' Booklist

'Here are many of the splendid, sharp-eyed sentences for which [Didion] has long been admired ... An