Books of revelation
The author looks at us between the fat lettering on the cover of her book with the implacable gaze of a prisoner. Perhaps this will be her last book. Perhaps she is still trapped inside these pages, or the era they represent. Joan Didion is 86, but in these 12 dazzling essays she sounds like an ingénue, albeit a sharp-eyed one. Everything in
LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I MEAN (4th Estate, $32.99) was written between 1968 and 2000, before the two great catastrophes of her life – the unexpected deaths of her husband, fellow writer John Gregory Dunne, and daughter Quintana.
Even when these pieces
