NOTES TO JOHN

Who writer Joan Didion was has never been clearer than in her attempt to trace the emotional cosmos of her deeply troubled adopted daughter, Quintana. Built from a set of notes left on her desk, this posthumous work lends itself particularly well to narrator Julianne Moore's delicate twang. Whereas much of Didion's oeuvre is identifiable for its razor-sharp economy of language, these notes have a more languid style--ambling clumsily towards insight, more captivated by the journey of thought than the climax of epiphany. With distinct tones for Didion and her Freudian psychoanalyst, Moore cohesively reproduces transformative years of talk therapy, sensitively voicing Didion's keen analyses of depression and the never-ending guessing games and exhausting delegations that parents of alcoholics and addicts will find heartbreakingly familiar. K.L.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2025]