Play It As It Lays (Collins Modern Classics)

(Paperback)

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A ruthless and unflinching examination of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking.
One thing in my defence, not that it matters: I know what nothing means, and keep on playing

Somewhere out beyond Hollywood, hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeths life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. In her early thirties, divorced from her husband, dislocated from friends, anesthetized to pain and pleasure, Wheth is a woman who has run out of both desires and motives the epitome of a generation made ill by too much freedom.

More than five decades after its original publication, Play it as it Lays remains a profoundly disturbing novel that ruthlessly dissects American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking.

Reviews

She writes with a razor. New York Times

A pioneer of New Journalism, she brilliantly chronicled Americas 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 yearwhen 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

Author Bio

Joan Didion is one of America's most respected writers, her work constituting some of the greatest portraits of modern-day American culture. Over the four decades of her career, she has produced widely-acclaimed journalistic essays, personal essays, novels, non-fiction, memoir and screenplays. Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award in 2005.