Play It As It Lays

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.

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.

“She writes with a razor. " New York Times A pioneer of New Journalism, she brilliantly chronicled America "s 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 year when 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”

‘She writes with a razor … You are both frightened and astonished … It seems to me just about perfect, so heartbreaking and inescapable’ New York Times

‘Didion’s modant lucidity is like L.A. sunlight, a thing so bright sometimes it hurts’ Time, Top 100 Novels of All Time

‘For a few decades, this was my favourite modern American novel … revelatory’ Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho

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.

A ruthless and unflinching examination of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking. Somewhere out beyond Hollywood, hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeth's life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. Anaesthetized to pain and pleasure, she is seemingly unaffected by her fraught personal history. In her early thirties, divorced from her husband, dislocated from friends, and somehow detached from her past and future, Wyeth epitomises a generation made ill by too much freedom. Set beyond good and evil - literally in Los Angeles and the barren wastescapes of the Mojave desert, and figuratively in the landscapes of a broken spirit - Play It As It Lays is an immaculately wrought vision of Californian culture on the cusp of the 1970s. Three decades after its original publication, the novel remains an intense dissection of a very particular time and place.

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