Play It As It Lays - Didion

[Kristel]

Read 2014; Review: This is a story about “nothing”. Set in the sixties and mostly hollywood, the story tells about a young woman’s journey into madness. There is nothing happy about this book and thankfully it is short. I wanted to read it because I loved Ms Didion’s book, A Year of Magical Thinking which was a memoir. This was a novel. Still, Ms Didion’s writing is delivered. I like her writing. This story is told in every increasing sparseness as the protagonist slips further and further into depression or madness. I would compare this to The Yellow Wallpaper and The Bell Jar.

[Gail]

I finished reading Play It As It Lays and much like Kristel loved A Year of Magical Thinking and was looking forward to Didion's fiction. Didion's writing delivered in this sparse story about a young actress estranged from her director husband in the nihilistic Hollywood and Vegas of the 60's. The Main Character connects with nothing in her life except her daughter who has been taken away from her for only vaguely described health reasons. At various moments she seems to reach out and want to be with her husband, wants to be connected to the car on the freeway, connected to alcohol but ultimately she surrenders to bundling herself in a cocoon of connecting to nothing with a complete indifference to the activities of people around her.
The book was startling when first published for the profile of a women so divorced from reality and also for descriptions of extramarital sex, violence, and an abortion. Today, it is still startling but more purely for the crisp raw writing about the unraveling of a mind.

[Valerie]

read Sept. 2021

I found the first quarter of this book rather excruciating. The ennui induced ennui in me and it was a distasteful thought to get back to reading this novel. Then the novel picked up when the one event of the story happens (not going to spoil it). Although, ‘picked up’ is relative; at least there was finally a focus. It still is a novel about a group of self-absorbed, extremely shallow people who are so clued out that we never get to know who they are because they haven’t the first idea either. More than likely that was one of Didion’s points. I can see that this would have been ‘profoundly disturbing’ and ‘startling’ (GR description) when it was first published. However, that isn’t the case now. If it wasn’t for the writing, I suspect this would just be lumped in with the other books like that are similar. Didion’s writing is the only thing that got me through the first quarter, and it remained superior throughout the rest of the novel. 3.5*

[Pamela]

This was a pretty bleak book, set in 1960s Hollywood. The main character lives a listless life fuelled by barbiturates, bickers with her estranged husband, and drives along the freeway as a form of escape. Her film career has stalled and she is declining physically and mentally.

I loved Didion’s sharp, incisive prose and the way she gave intriguing glimpses of her characters’ lives behind the shallow self-absorbed film world. It isn’t particularly startling by modern standards, but still has the power to make you stop and think.

[George P.]

Almost a five-star novel for me. Didion tells a powerful story about a depressed actress with an economy of words. It reminded me somewhat of "The Bell Jar"; I had this thought before I read that Kristel also found it similar to Bell Jar. I think I will read her "Year of Magical Thinking" in the near future.

[Pip]

I just love Didion's style. Her economy with words is marvellous. Not an extra word anywhere. This makes it easy to read in a practical sense, but an excruciating read because the subject matter is so chilling. This is not to be read at a time of vulnerabilty. The protagonist is an actor whose inability to ignore the shallow, insincere and fiercely competitive world of Hollywood leads her to drive aimlessly along LA's endless freeways, over indulge in drugs, particularly alcohol, and become paralysed by inaction. The supposed glamour is exposed as inauthentic and alienating. It was the second novel she wrote, and the first of hers I have read. I loved Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The Year of Magical Thinking, both essay collections, but I am also in awe of her as a novelist. I believe Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne wrote the screenplay for the movie which came out in 1972. I am going to search for it.

[Jane]

I adored Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and this book is written in a similar style. Didion even uses few almost identical descriptions/phrases. It is just SO depressing. Every character is a morally bankrupt slimeball, a depressed victim of a morally bankrupt slimeball, or somehow both. Agree with Pip above: not to be read at a time of vulnerability

⭐⭐⭐ 1/2