Joan Didion is a must on anyone’s reading list, and if you tend to struggle with long stories and too many characters to keep track of, Play It As It Lays is a great place to start with her work. The story follows Maria Wyeth, an actress living in Los Angeles whose life has become increasingly detached from everything around her.
What I liked most is how little Didion tries to explain. Maria moves through parties, highways, empty rooms, and conversations without ever seeming fully there. The writing is simple and precise, and the atmosphere does most of the work. Los Angeles feels hot, distant, strangely empty, even when Maria is surrounded by people.
At the same time, the book completely transports you to the glamour of 1960s Los Angeles. There are the Hollywood parties, the cars, the houses, the endless roads and that very particular world of old Hollywood. But beneath all of that, Didion shows how lonely that world can feel. And maybe that is why the book still feels so current. Loneliness doesn’t really care who you are or what your life looks like from the outside. It can happen to anyone, even to people living inside a beautiful bubble.
It’s not really a book you read for the plot. It’s more about getting inside Maria’s head and understanding a certain kind of loneliness. There’s something very unsettling about how normal everything feels while, underneath it, her life is falling apart. It’s also a very quick read, which makes it an easy one to pick up when you want something literary without committing to a huge novel.
Read it if you like books that leave you with a feeling rather than a neat conclusion.