V.F. Portrait: Joan Didion

In The Year of Magical Thinking, the 2005 best-seller, Joan Didion dissected the trauma of losing her husband, John Gregory Dunne. With Blue Nights, to be published in November by Knopf, she agonizingly explores the heavier blow that followed: the death of their daughter, Quintana Roo.

Christopher Hitchens contemplates a tragic achievement.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/10/joan-didion-201110