Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
dark
sad
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
was going to be a solid 3 and then the last lines just hit me so hard it bumped it up half a point. this falls into the same category as osamu dazai’s work for me. depressing but so well written. yeesh.
dark
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Play It As It Lays is one of those books that you respect more than you enjoy. It’s an emotionally vacant novel that drags through the twisted wasteland of 1960s Hollywood, following a protagonist completely surrendered to despair. There’s brilliance in its construction, the fragmented bits hold well together but that still does not make it a pleasant read.
Maria Wyeth, the protagonist, spends most of the book drifting. Through hotel rooms, meaningless conversations, empty drives across California. Her passivity, numbness, and refusal to reflect in the way we expect fictional characters to do is incredibly frustrating. The novel demands that you sit with discomfort, detachment, and pure dislike for its characters and narration you are being exposed to. It's especially alienating without the cultural or historical context of Los Angeles and United States of America as a whole during the 60s.
That said, I understand why this novel is so popular. There’s a kind of precision in the emptiness it captures.
Maria Wyeth, the protagonist, spends most of the book drifting. Through hotel rooms, meaningless conversations, empty drives across California. Her passivity, numbness, and refusal to reflect in the way we expect fictional characters to do is incredibly frustrating. The novel demands that you sit with discomfort, detachment, and pure dislike for its characters and narration you are being exposed to. It's especially alienating without the cultural or historical context of Los Angeles and United States of America as a whole during the 60s.
That said, I understand why this novel is so popular. There’s a kind of precision in the emptiness it captures.
I like didions writing style, not the biggest fan of the time period and Hollywood so I wasn’t completely enthralled, but great novel and I loved to hate the main character.
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Idk how to rate this book. Can’t say I enjoyed the experience of reading it, it made me feel sick to my stomach. But also I think that’s the point?? I don’t think there will ever be a time in my life where I’m mentally prepared to read this book. But goddamn Joan didion knows what she’s doing.
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
As someone fascinated by Didion's writing and the intoxication of the 1960s, this was a fascinating novel for me. Maria Wyeth's entire apathetic and removed persona created an interesting angle in how she dealt with everything that entered her life. From her career, Kate's institutionalisation and the abortion Maria didn't want to have were some of the emotionally charged segments of this novel.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Drug use, Suicide, Violence, Abortion
Play It As It Lays is a short novel, but hits hard. The pacing of it is strangely fast, yet meltingly slow at the same time - illustrating the deep void which Maria (an LA actress - protagonist) is experiencing. Didion is scarily adept at creating a suffocating, uncomfortably raw depiction of suffering and, "unspeakable peril, in the everyday."
This numbess and sedation Maria feels, often to try to forget the pains of her divorce and the separation of her hospitalised child, is communicated through casual remarks of traumatic or impactful events that Maria has experienced. While the LA landscape of casual vices might not be so familiar to every reader, Maria's adamancy to keep herself occupied in habits such as driving along endless highways because, "to pause was to throw herself into unspeakable peril" -- feels all too real and heartbreaking. The realisation that sometimes life goes on, unspeakably, in the midst of suffering, is something Maria knows well.
This is my first book of Didion's, even though I know her specialty is memoirs, I wanted to see what kind of fiction novels she had written. I'm excited to try read some of her memoirs.
────────────────── .✦
"She could not read newspapers because certain stories leapt at her from the page: the four-year-olds in the abandoned refrigerator, the tea party with Purex, the infant in the driveway, rattlesnake in the playpen, the peril, unspeakable peril, in the everyday."
"One thing in my defense, not that it matters [...] I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing."
This numbess and sedation Maria feels, often to try to forget the pains of her divorce and the separation of her hospitalised child, is communicated through casual remarks of traumatic or impactful events that Maria has experienced. While the LA landscape of casual vices might not be so familiar to every reader, Maria's adamancy to keep herself occupied in habits such as driving along endless highways because, "to pause was to throw herself into unspeakable peril" -- feels all too real and heartbreaking. The realisation that sometimes life goes on, unspeakably, in the midst of suffering, is something Maria knows well.
This is my first book of Didion's, even though I know her specialty is memoirs, I wanted to see what kind of fiction novels she had written. I'm excited to try read some of her memoirs.
────────────────── .✦
"She could not read newspapers because certain stories leapt at her from the page: the four-year-olds in the abandoned refrigerator, the tea party with Purex, the infant in the driveway, rattlesnake in the playpen, the peril, unspeakable peril, in the everyday."
"One thing in my defense, not that it matters [...] I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing."