a book

Play It As It Lays

Name: Play It As It Lays
Rating: 5 (7 reviews)
Author: Joan Didion
ISBN: 9780374529949

Joan Didion · 2005 · 214 pages

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader.

Set in a place beyond good and evil---literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul---it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

recommended by 7 people

sourced from public statements

Emily Ratajkowski
“It was not the first Didion I’d ever read, but it was one that I felt instantly sucked in by and it kind of reads like a fever dream, so it’s really good one to read in one go.”↗
Geoff Ramsey
“Just finished “Play It As It Lays” on the plane. That book fucked me up. Powerful and painful read. #joandidion”↗
Justin Vivian Bond
“Turned me onto the poetry of nihilism at a very tender age. Spare and strong, ‘I know what “nothing” means, and keep on playing.'”↗
Carrie Fisher
“I love her use of spare narrative throughout this story about an unfulfilled actress looking for purpose in her life. I admired the style then and have tried to pattern some of my own writing in that fashion.”↗
Jack Edwards
David Maraniss
Frank Chimero