Bibliograph

Play it as it lays, a novel, Joan Didion

Type

Label

Play it as it lays, a novel, Joan Didion

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

fiction

Main title

Play it as it lays

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Oclc number

953448106

Responsibility statement

Joan Didion

Sub title

a novel

Summary

Play It As It Lays tells the story of minor Hollywood actress Maria Wyeth, in her early 30s, troubled, and the spiritually arid, drug-numbed world through which she moves. Divorced from her movie-director husband, mother of a little girl, Maria, an ex-model from a tiny Nevada town, is recovering from a breakdown as the novel opens. Via a series of taut, impressionistic scenes, the narrative surveys her path to the present, from a Silver Wells, Nevada, girlhood to Hollywood, a life marked, for Maria, by broken relationships, reliance on pills, and empty sex, and spent among play-acting narcissists. Written by an author with intimate knowledge of Hollywood, and one of our keenest observers of cultural emptiness, Play It As It Lays is harrowing, a brilliant, unsparing exploration of self-destructive lives. The novel's hyper-vivid settings--Los Angeles during the searing Santa Ana winds, neon Las Vegas, sunblasted desert towns--are essential to its haunting atmosphere, one with hints of impending doom and shriveling sustenance

Classification