Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion
 The novel begins with an internal monologue by the 31-year-old Maria Wyeth, followed by short reminiscences of her friend Helene, and ex-husband, film director Carter Lang. The further narration is conducted from a third-person perspective in eighty-four chapters of terse, controlled and highly visual prose typical for Didion. The protagonist, an unfulfilled actress, recounts her life while recovering from a mental breakdown in an exclusive Neuropsychiatric Institute. The reason for her confinement is purportedly having participated in the suicidal death of a befriended bisexual movie producer, BZ (an abbreviation for benzodiazepines, sedative drugs). The “facts” from Wyeth’s childhood include being raised in the small town of Silver Wells, Nevada, to a gambling, careless father and a neurotic mother who used to “croon to herself” of chimeric yearnings. After graduating from a high school in Tonopah, encouraged by her parents, she leaves for New York to become an actress. In the Big Apple, Maria works temporarily as a model and meets ex-boyfriend, Ivan Costello, as is later insinuated, a domineering psychological blackmailer who has no scruples using the money and the body of his acquiescent girlfriend. During her stay in the city, Maria receives the news about the death of her mother, possibly a victim of a self-provoked car accident. Her father dies soon afterwards, leaving useless mineral rights to his business partner and friend, Benny Austin. Maria withdraws from acting and modeling to get over the shock of her mother’s death, splits up with Ivan, moving to Hollywood with the newly met Carter. We learn that she and Carter have a 4-year-old daughter Kate, undergoing mental and physical “treatment” for some “aberrant chemical in her brain.” Maria truly loves her daughter, as indicated by her tender descriptions of the child, frequent visits to the hospital, and a determination “to get her out.” She seems to be the only significant person in Wyeth’s life. The love for the girl obviously means more than her marriage to despotic Lang and affairs with men, including his Hollywood acquaintances, Les Goodwin and BZ. In the course of the novel, Maria becomes pregnant, plausibly by Les, and is coerced by Carter to abort. The traumatic procedure leaves her mentally shattered and haunted by nightmares of dying children. Looking for oblivion, she plunges into her routine of compulsive driving on the roads and freeways of southern California, wandering through motels and bars, drinking and chancing sexual encounters with second-rate actors and ex-lovers. She spends a night in jail for car theft and drug possession, after a one-night stand with a minor film star, Johnny Waters. Eventually she involves herself in a perverse love quadrangle with Carter, BZ and his wife Helene, abruptly ended when BZ overdoses on sedative barbiturates (specifically, Seconal) in Maria’s hotel bedroom. The book concludes with reclusive Maria planning a new life with Kate, resolved to “keep on playing,” despite her past.