✍ Scribed by Joan Didion
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
A harrowing tale of Hollywood, Las Vegas, and a young woman in pursuit of oblivion by theNew York Times–bestselling author ofThe White Album.
Spare, elegant, and terrifying,Play It as It Laysis 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 Laysruthlessly 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).
Adult Fiction
📜 SIMILAR VOLUMES
Paperback, 214 pages Published 1970 Fourth Estate, HarperCollins Epub (2011) Time Magazine 100 Best Novels | 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
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