I've followed Alissa Wilkinson's career from her early days at CT, then Vox, to her current (well deserved) role as a film critic for NYT. I've lost count of the number of times her reviews have convinced me to watch a movie that, once I started it, I realized was clearly not for me. That's the thing about her writing--it's always compelling, driven by a clear and provocative thesis, elucidated with unexpected insights and connections. She's able to connect a movie with the motives of the storyteller, drawing lines between current cultural artifacts and back to historical trends. It literally doesn't matter what she's writing about, I always find so much to think about that I become convinced that I, too, need to see this movie. Most of the time, I end up enjoying her writing even more than the subject she's writing about. So even though I know next to nothing about Joan Didion, I truly enjoyed this book.

We Tell Ourselves Stories combines Didion's biographical history with excerpts from her essays and novels to illuminate Didion's unique insight on show business and the way our contemporary politics have come to resemble show business. Wilkinson notices a pattern in Didion's life: "She would first notice and write about the myths she believed and questioned; then she would write about the world that created the myths; and then she would use that lens to examine the symbiosis between media, politics, and what she thought of as 'sentimentalization' in the culture narratives we tell to keep ourselves afloat." I wonder if even Didion knew herself as well as Wilkinson does, if she saw as much coherence in her writing and life story as Wilkinson reveals in this narrative.

It's the kind of story that would probably be better read by someone who knows Didion's work (I'm only familiar with A Year of Magical Thinking), but even without a lot of background knowledge, I was fascinated to learn more about the intertwining of show business and politics in the era just before I became aware of either. Wilkinson is a thoughtful, attentive biographer/critic (she says that this isn't strictly a biography, but rather an exploration of how one woman was uniquely poised to understand the mythologies of Hollywood as first as a critic, later as insider and eventually as a political writer.) Perhaps Didion is a guide to help us understand our contemporary era. I don't know enough about her to concur, but once again I find myself captivated by Wilkinson's argument. Wilkinson's admiration is sincere and comprehensive, but not ingratiating.

We all had a Joan Didion phase where we sped through her works with the awe and wonder that someone out there said the things we've all been thinking. Didion had an eagle-eyed view of culture and politics and she was able to muse on them over the course of her life. Readers were able to watch her opinions and observations ebb and flow over time.
In 'We Tell Ourselves Stories,' Wilkinson weaves biographical elements of Didion's life and passages of her writing in with a larger commentary on the narratives we've had sold to us and the narratives we sell ourselves.
Currently, the American political climate is in shambles. This book felt cathartic in a way that I wasn't able to fully explain. The discussions, especially surrounding Reagan and John Wayne, about making life more like the movies and poisoning the well of reality by making everything feel like a facsimile of a prewritten script with heroes and villains resonated deeply. It explained some of the phenomena that we're watching play out right now just as it's been playing out for years. Joan clocked it back in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s.
This was interesting and poignant--especially right now. If you're a fan of Joan Didion or even just the narratives we've created to make the myth of the great American dream, I highly recommend.
Thank you so much to W.W. Norton & Co and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

We Tell Ourselves Stories is an academic study about the life and works of Joan Didion. It is a heavily-researched and well-documented look into Didion and her ideal of the American myth. Highly recommended for Didion fans and students of her writing.

For years, Joan Didion captured audiences with her dry wit and sophisticated, sharp prose, writing about politics, current events and stars until, ultimately, becoming a star herself. Many come across Didion as the author of some of the literary world’s finest works—Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, The Year of Magical Thinking—but fail to recognize her as the incredible screenwriter that she was. After moving to the Hollywood Hills in 1965, Didion, along with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, spent much of her time writing multiple screenplays, launching her deep in to the politics, nuances, and mythologies of Hollywood.

Though this book contains pieces of Didion’s life, Wilkinson makes it clear from the beginning that this is not a biography. Wilkinson’s aim in We Tell Ourselves Stories is to look at the narratives that Hollywood film has given us, allowing viewers a unique way to understand their own lives, and to look back at how Hollywood influenced and shaped Didion’s own work and life. Didion once said, “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means”. Here, Wilkinson shows readers that film has been doing exactly that for all of us—Didion included—for decades and decades.
“What I’m arguing here is that Didion is perhaps best, or most fruitfully, understood through the lens of American mythmaking in Hollywood. She was influenced by it, came to understand how it worked, and then used it as a tool to understand the rest of the world.”

A captivating blend of biography, film and cultural history, and literary critique. Wilkinson writes with sharp focus, providing plentiful and rich research, giving readers a deeper understanding of Joan Didion’s work and the unrelenting grasp that Hollywood has on the imagination.

Thank you W. W. Norton & Co for the early copy in exchange for an honest review. Available Mar. 11 2025. *Quotes are pulled from an advanced reader copy and are subject to change prior to publication*

I've always loved learning about the film industry’s behind-the-scenes magic, and *We Tell Ourselves Stories* opened my eyes to so much more of its history. This book dives into Joan Didion’s life, showing how her experiences in Hollywood as a screenwriter and observer of its myths shaped her incredible storytelling. From her fascination with John Wayne to her critiques of how Hollywood sensationalized America’s fears, this cultural biography weaves Didion’s personal journey with the larger-than-life legacy of Tinseltown. It’s a fascinating mix of film history and literary insight that left me with a new appreciation for both Didion’s work and the power of movies to shape our collective imagination.