- Paperback
- Publisher: Pocket Books (Mm); Reissue edition (Jun 1984)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0671495909
- ISBN-13: 978-0671495909
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,550,050 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Play it as it Lays
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘She writes with a razor.’ New York Times
‘A pioneer of New Journalism, she brilliantly chronicled America’s cultural and political life.’ Guardian
‘Didion's mordant lucidity is like L.A. sunlight, a thing so bright sometimes it hurts.’ Time
PRAISE FOR THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING
'Her poetic writing has a spell-like charm that is profoundly affecting.' Observer
'this brave book maps a year…when the world flipped over to expose the underside of cool where things go bad.’ The Times
'The subject may be bleak, but her tender treatment makes it a book that we should all read.' Daily Mail
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.Product Description
A ruthless and unflinching examination of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking.
Somewhere out beyond Hollywood, hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeth’s life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. Anaesthetized to pain and pleasure, she is seemingly unaffected by her fraught personal history. In her early thirties, divorced from her husband, dislocated from friends, and somehow detached from her past and future, Wyeth epitomises a generation made ill by too much freedom.
Set beyond good and evil – literally in Los Angeles and the barren wastescapes of the Mojave desert, and figuratively in the landscapes of a broken spirit – Play It As It Lays is an immaculately wrought vision of Californian culture on the cusp of the 1970s. Three decades after its original publication, the novel remains an intense dissection of a very particular time and place.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
My experience of this book is that it divides opinion; you either find it depressing/irritating, or for some inexplicable reason...uplifting rather than disturning and I'm in the latter category.
But there's no escaping the fact that this novel has an incredibly hollow centre- the exploration of Hollywood and the drug culture of the 1960's won't make many readers feel all fuzzy inside, but there is something brutally refreshing about the heroine Maria's experiences, as we follow her on her journey. As a central character she's very unusual, quite possibly because she's in a permamant catatonic state and as a result she wades through the monotony of her life, observing events with a detachment that makes for surprisingly absorbing reading.
The point of view is very narrow in this story, it's a flow-of-conciousness novel (i.e. quite confusing at times), which may in itself put people off and the fact that the narrator has had an emotional bypass may also discourage those considering picking up this book, but I found Maria's story convincing and interesting. *But be warned, you'll need a good supply of coca-cola to consume whilst reading.
But there's no escaping the fact that this novel has an incredibly hollow centre- the exploration of Hollywood and the drug culture of the 1960's won't make many readers feel all fuzzy inside, but there is something brutally refreshing about the heroine Maria's experiences, as we follow her on her journey. As a central character she's very unusual, quite possibly because she's in a permamant catatonic state and as a result she wades through the monotony of her life, observing events with a detachment that makes for surprisingly absorbing reading.
The point of view is very narrow in this story, it's a flow-of-conciousness novel (i.e. quite confusing at times), which may in itself put people off and the fact that the narrator has had an emotional bypass may also discourage those considering picking up this book, but I found Maria's story convincing and interesting. *But be warned, you'll need a good supply of coca-cola to consume whilst reading.
Format:Paperback
I first read this novel on a trip to Los Angeles many years ago, and picked it up to read again when I revisited that city last month. The city is almost a character in the book: ever-present in the background as the heroine tries to escape from her demons by continually driving its endless freeways: "She drove the San Diego to the Harbor, the Harbor up to the Hollywood, the Hollywood to the Golden State, the Santa Monica, the Santa Ana, the Pasadena, the Ventura [...and she] lay at night in the still of Beverly hills and saw the great signs soar overhead at seventy miles an hour, Normandie 1/4 Vermont 3/4 Harbor Fwy 1." (p16).
Its presence is made stronger by the emptiness of the heroine's life: an unfulfilled actress in the middle of a divorce (and probably a nervous breakdown as well), drifting in the emotional space between sad memories of her parents, longings for her hospitalized daughter, and several men whose characters are so vaguely drawn that you find it hard to remember which is which. You can also tell that it's not a happy story, but the author tells it with such spare, tight and vivid prose (strongly reminiscent of Hemingway) that you find yourself being drawn along for the ride on those endless highways.
Its presence is made stronger by the emptiness of the heroine's life: an unfulfilled actress in the middle of a divorce (and probably a nervous breakdown as well), drifting in the emotional space between sad memories of her parents, longings for her hospitalized daughter, and several men whose characters are so vaguely drawn that you find it hard to remember which is which. You can also tell that it's not a happy story, but the author tells it with such spare, tight and vivid prose (strongly reminiscent of Hemingway) that you find yourself being drawn along for the ride on those endless highways.
Format:Paperback
It was entirely refreshing to read a book which ditches the usual flim flam and tells a engaging story in the fewest possible words.
The text makes you believe that the author is writing from memory and has actually experienced all that she describes.
The text makes you believe that the author is writing from memory and has actually experienced all that she describes.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Play it as it lays?
Set in Beverly Hills in what I think is the late 60's, early 70's, we meet Maria, an actress out of work, just as her marriage is ending and she is going through a nervous... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Book 1981
Depressing but good (!)
Probably one of the more depressing books I've read, this is one long tale of misery, centred around a has-been actress whose life slowly goes off the rails into a miasma of... Read more
Published on 5 Nov 2002 by "ajf93"
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