When death is on the line

Books and Movies 2006: Two recent books—one by a Christian and one not—show dramatic contrasts | Matthew P. Ristuccia

Sometimes Christians read only Christian books, a practice that can help us avoid the lures of false philosophies but may also reduce our understanding of the sharp distinction between Christian and non-Christian worldviews. Nowhere does that difference become clearer than in meditations on death.

The most heralded death book of the past two years is Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (Knopf, 2005), winner of the National Book Award. The book originated with the abrupt death of Ms. Didion's husband, John, as the two were sitting down to dinner in their New York apartment several days after Christmas, 2003. The book is an attempt to make sense of what followed, "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death."