Reading both with and against Joan Didion, Matthew McLennan again challenges the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy, while providing critical insight into the ethics and politics of memory, nostalgia, and truth.

Devin Zane Shaw, Regular Faculty, Douglas College, Canada

Matthew McLennan's book is a fresh new voice in the study of Joan Didion's art: his comprehensive critique dazzles with insight and will certainly open up new avenues of research for future Didion scholars.

Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice, Assistant Professor of English, The University of Wroclaw, Poland

In his bracing analysis of Didion's "ethics of memory," Matthew McLennan gives us a Didion both self-pitying and tough, a writer whose devastating personal loss resonates with a vast public readership. His account of Didion as a moral teacher whose pessimism saves her from nihilism casts her in an important new light.

Leigh Gilmore, Visiting Professor of English, The Ohio State University, USA, and author of Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives