Name: Play it as it Lays
Rating: 3.946428571428572 (224 reviews)
ISBN: 9780007414994

Joan Didion

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Last Thing He Wanted and A Book of Common Prayer.

Play it as it Lays

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, "Play It As It Lays" captures the mood of an entire generation. Joan Didion chose Hollywood to serve as her microcosm of contemporary society and exposed a culture characterized by emptiness and ennui.

A Novel

Play It As It Lays

Greg Talbot

A stark, brutal novel about the setting sun of a Tinseltown actress. It plays very much in a Hemingway-style, where the words are few, but positioned in a meaningful poetic manner. Our protagonist Maria comes off as selfish and incredibly self-involved, but we also see a world around her of men who use her and treat her like a performing animal. Although I didn't love the book, I very much admire Didion's careful attention to mood, the way she put so much emphasis into how characters approach each other. We never get an outsider's perspective, just the distorted lense of Maria or the other selfish players of the story. It feels like a well crafted play...and re-reading sections of the novel I can just imagine this being fully realized with a visual adaptation. Ultimately, the book is about a woman in trouble. She's a hot mess, shelled-up, possibly drug-addict, and her one selfless love is out of her custody. Maria embodies someone who has lived too much and loved too little, and the portrait was so poignant. **On another note, I highly recommend Joan Didion's book "The Year of Magical Thinking", about her journey with grief. One of the most moving books i've read in the last few years.

very bleak read. didion takes a world that many people envy and slices it open to see how it works. and it’s not pretty.

feels like reading into one’s journal entries on how she transforms more and more into a version of herself where life just doesn’t work anymore for her. there’s this central feeling of nihilism and depression that didion counters on, and something luminous too, an unintended hopefulness, perhaps, that crept on when the author wasn’t looking.

this is my first didion book so i was pretty excited to delve into her writing. i can’t make any notes yet, since i know her best works lie in her non-fictions, but so far, her writing feels like razor. it’s so sharp and witty. it flushes me in a way that i can’t seem to grasp but for some reason able to feel. this book really blends the feeling of nothingness and the state of it through entries, and i kinda like the idea behind it. not amazing, but i think it works. very depressing and cold, but i think that was the intention for it to be.

very bleak read. didion takes a world that many people envy and slices it open to see how it works. and it’s not pretty.

feels like reading into one’s journal entries on how she transforms more and more into a version of herself where life just doesn’t work anymore for her. there’s this central feeling of nihilism and depression that didion counters on, and something luminous too, an unintended hopefulness, perhaps, that crept on when the author wasn’t looking.

this is my first didion book so i was pretty excited to delve into her writing. i can’t make any notes yet, since i know her best works lie in her non-fictions, but so far, her writing feels like razor. it’s so sharp and witty. it flushes me in a way that i can’t seem to grasp but for some reason able to feel. this book really blends the feeling of nothingness and the state of it through entries, and i kinda like the idea behind it. not amazing, but i think it works. very depressing and cold, but i think that was the intention for it to be.

hmm. im ngl i was not confident i understood what was going on (literal sense) for like 70% of this book. often sad and sometimes disturbing. interesting story, definitely successful communication of a feeling and a sense of this character’s mind. 

julia

This is what my year of rest and relaxation wanted to be. Didion does indeed write with a knife.

Sohini Roy

i don't think my brain is built for this type of writing

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, 'Play It as It Lays' captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil - literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul - it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

Louisa

Didion is so successfully unsentimental. A sharp observer of humans and culture, precise and terrifying in her insight. Play it as it Lays is a book in the mind of a depressed, listless woman aimlessly floating in what Didion observes as the Californian decadence of the 60s, though the book never gives any such clear cut terms as clues. It's a bored but functioning nihilistic crowd that thinks it's seen everything and has money and nothing else to do. It's striking how she captures what it's like to live without meaning, maybe due to too much freedom of choice. It also feels like a lot of her personal fears jump out of the pages. A very dark, pessimistic mind without hope, so perfectly captured. But which still often feels the melancholia of being barely alive. "I know what nothing means, and I keep on playing." The tiny 1.5 to 2 page chapters' format makes it irresistible and hard to put down.

Sarah Sammis

Road narratives with women seem to break into three camps: ones that end up with romantic entanglements, those that are dangerous because of unwanted sexual encounters (rape, stalking, domestic abuse), and maternity (pregnancy, expected or unexpected, miscarriages, still births, or being over shadowed by traveling with children).

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2017/comm...

D D D 

I know what nothing means and keep playing anyways! 

I have a hard time recently enjoying books with depressed and disaffected female characters. Love you girls but I want to have fun right now. 3.5 stars. 

This book utilizes subtext incredibly. 

Finished this on the porch, caffeinated, warm wind blowing, contemplating being alone.

annalyse! 

devastating, atmospheric, cinematic, incredible

A “scathing novel” of one woman’s path of self-destruction in 1960s Hollywood—by the New York Times–bestselling author of The White Album (The Washington Post Book World). Spare, elegant, and terrifying, Play It as It Lays is the unforgettable story of a woman and a society come undone. Raised in the ghost town of Silver Wells, Nevada, Maria Wyeth is an ex-model and the star of two films directed by her estranged husband, Carter Lang. But in the spiritual desert of 1960s Los Angeles, Maria has lost the plot of her own life. Her daughter, Kate, was born with an “aberrant chemical in her brain.” Her long-troubled marriage has slipped beyond repair, and her disastrous love affairs and strained friendships provide little comfort. Her only escape is to get in her car and drive the freeway—in the fast lane with the radio turned up high—until it runs out “somewhere no place at all where the flawless burning concrete just stopped.” But every ride to nowhere, every sleepless night numbed by pills and booze and sex, makes it harder for Maria to find the meaning in another day. Told with profound economy of style and a “vision as bleak and precise as Eliot’s in ‘The Wasteland’,” Play It as It Lays ruthlessly dissects the dark heart of the American dream (The New York Times). It is a searing masterpiece “from one of the very few writers of our time who approaches her terrible subject with absolute seriousness, with fear and humility and awe” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review).

Play It as It Lays

désirée

i love it when a book is literally a knife. epic catharsis rn...... i just read a beautiful, beautiful book.

Despite Didion's esteemed reputation as a skilled writer, the execution of this novel fell short for me, leading to the contemplation of whether it might benefit from a revisit.

The narrative, while attempting a dark exploration of Hollywood nihilism, felt disjointed and lacked a cohesive flow. The choppy sentences disrupted my reading experience, often failing to establish a smooth connection between ideas. Although this may not have been a seamless fit for me, its inherent darkness and pace may well appeal to readers with a penchant for such thematic exploration. 

My curiosity remains piqued, and I'm open to exploring Didion's nonfiction works, including her acclaimed memoirs and essays, as I've heard commendable reviews about it.

傑恩

Despite Didion's esteemed reputation as a skilled writer, the execution of this novel fell short for me, leading to the contemplation of whether it might benefit from a revisit.

The narrative, while attempting a dark exploration of Hollywood nihilism, felt disjointed and lacked a cohesive flow. The choppy sentences disrupted my reading experience, often failing to establish a smooth connection between ideas. Although this may not have been a seamless fit for me, its inherent darkness and pace may well appeal to readers with a penchant for such thematic exploration. 

My curiosity remains piqued, and I'm open to exploring Didion's nonfiction works, including her acclaimed memoirs and essays, as I've heard commendable reviews about it.

Lorraine

This was a gift from my son, as I had never read anything from Joan Didion before and mentioned she was on my mind to try. The story is about a struggling actress in 1960’s Hollywood. I can’t fully explain how this book made me feel all the emotions that the main character Maria was going through from the outset. The depression, sadness, loss, loneliness, to the point that I had to keep taking pauses, to take a breath. It’s such a powerful, emotional story that I wouldn’t recommend reading if you are already feeling low. It takes a long while to shake it off. However, even though it was such a depressing story, it made me fall in love with the writing of Joan Didion. I finished the book knowing that I will now seek out all of her work, she is such an amazing writer.

Play it as it Lays

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