Books about the famous and the fascinating

In memoriam
Mere words often can’t do justice to vast subjects like love and grief, but Joan Didion brings the language as close as it’s possible to in “The Year Of Magical Thinking” (Knopf, $23, to be published in October).

Didion wrote the book in what she calls “an attempt to make sense of the period that followed” the sudden death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, and the simultaneous life-threatening illness of their adult daughter. (Didion's daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne Michael, 39, died last month, just before the book was to be published.)

Didion’s trademark remote Hemingway-esque diction is perfect here; her prose is a flawless reflection of the numbness and dislocation of grief.  But it isn’t a depressing book, or entirely sad; it’s more of a haunting melody. 

Didion talks about forcing her mind to avoid memories of her husband, and memories adjacent to him, but she recalls them anyway, and when she remembers Dunne standing in a swimming pool reading a book, or the way he used to lampoon college singing groups, the reader gets a series of tart, sweet snapshots of their shared life.  It’s a lovely elegy, full of loss but also of comfort and remembered happiness.    —Sarah D. Bunting

Nightclub nights
The story of twentieth-century Cuba is so dense that addressing it in a single book is nearly impossible. In “Tropicana Nights: The Life And Times Of The Legendary Cuban Nightclub” (Harcourt, $26), journalist Rosa Lowinger teams with Ofelia Fox, widow of Tropicana owner Martin Fox, to tell both the Foxes’ story and the story of Cuba through the lens of a single, successful, quite possibly Mafia-infiltrated business.

While she focuses on Tropicana, Lowinger also spins the contemporary story of homey visits with Ofelia and other figures from Tropicana’s history, both in California and in Cuba. At times, it is these scenes in which aging characters reminisce that are the most compelling. Lowinger’s occasional clashes with Ofelia over Tropicana’s possible mob ties and Castro himself reveal Ofelia’s stubbornness and loyalty.

Unfortunately, the book suffers at times from an abundance of poorly chosen detail. There are far more names dropped than a reader will ever remember, and indeed, many never come up again. Some of Lowinger’s many tangents are colorful, but others are tiring. Not only does this make the book feel long, but the avalanche of facts is a distraction.

Aside from that, however, “Tropicana Nights” is fresh and entertaining, both as biography and as history.    —L.H.

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC.com's Books Editor. Linda Holmes is a writer in Bloomington, Minn. Kim Rollins is a writer in Seattle. Sarah D. Bunting is a writer in Brooklyn.

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