The Last Thing He Wanted

Didion, Joan. The Last Thing He Wanted. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.

I am a fan of Joan Didion’s nonfiction work and was excited to find her fiction. But I was somewhat disappointed. I’m not a fan of genre work. I recently proofed a murder mystery for a friend, and The Last thing He Wanted reminded me of that process.

As always, craft-wise Didion is a consummate writer. Each component of the text was meticulously constructed. Each character was full and round, including the narrator. Each place vivid and real. But each was a unit that for me didn’t quite fit together as a whole. Not quite.

Perhaps it was the implied vagueness of the narrator, or the round-about approach to information that created this gap for me. More likely, I think, it was the “genre” it read like a super-market murder mystery. And I was disappointed. I did recommend the book to my friend the murder mystery writer. Didion builds to the climax well. Each moment, scene, event in the text building on the last to create the next; a neat package.

As a fan of Didion’s nonfiction I remain aware that she knows, life doesn’t fit together like that and we often have to stretch to figure out why a is connected to f. The beauty of Didion’s work is in finding that connection. In The Last Thing He Wanted this element was sadly missing and from Didion it is the only thing I expected, or wanted.