Play It As It LaysJoan DidionLabel: Fourth Estate LtdDescription: 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 Wyeth’s 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.
