THE little Kansas ravine hugging the Missouri border was ghostly silent and seemingly detached from the outside world on a rainy day in late November, but John Greenleaf Whittier's tribute to those who died on the spot 140 years ago filled my head as I tramped the grassy hillside.

Though The Year of Magical Thinking is a book that wears its sadness on its sleeve, there is a sense that in all Didion's great writing, even the most seemingly detached, her often fragile state of mind bled on to the page.

The story essentially consists of two sets of encounters, 20 years apart, between the tormented Austerlitz and the narrator, who is only seemingly detached.

A flame, seemingly detached, swung like an acrobat and licked up the palm heads on the platform.

The President sat across from him, seemingly detached, patiently waiting.

Despite her seemingly detached and emotionless manner, she is in love with Kouta and thus a rival of Chizuru's for Kouta's affections.

Hemmed in by the chalky cliffs of the Palisades, the lulling Hudson River and the rolling trails of Riverside Park, the Boat Basin - so deceptively situated and seemingly detached from the rest of the island - nonetheless offers a disarming view of the New York skyline.

And even as he performed the highly technical operation with seemingly detached and reluctant hands, he thought of a schoolteacher in Bessarabia.