Play It as It Lays: A Novel

Play It as It Lays is a searing masterpiece that dissects the dark heart of the American dream with absolute seriousness, fear, humility, and awe.

This unforgettable story follows Maria Wyeth, an ex-model and film star, as she navigates the spiritual desert of 1960s Los Angeles.

Despite her privileged upbringing in Silver Wells, Nevada, Maria has lost the plot of her own life, driven by a daughter born with an "aberrant chemical in her brain" and a long-troubled marriage that's slipped beyond repair.

Her only escape is to drive the freeway until it runs out "somewhere no place at all where the flawless burning concrete just stopped." With profound economy of style, Joan Didion crafts a vision as bleak and precise as Eliot's in "The Wasteland," revealing the dark underbelly of the American dream.

This is one of the very few writers of our time who approaches her terrible subject with absolute seriousness, fear, humility, and awe.