It’s All Desolation and Downward Spirals in “Play It As It Lays”

I’m starting to wonder if I intentionally seek out books with depressing narratives- if something in the books I choose reveals some truth about my own inner emotional state. Am I the fragile and emotionally-destroyed women portrayed in these books? Anyways… Enough introspection, that’s not what you’re all here for. This week, I’m reviewing “Play It As It Lays,” the 1970 novel by Joan Didion.

I picked up this book impulsively while scanning the bookshelves the last time I made a trip to my local book store (Book People- the largest independently-owned book store!) because the cover was vibrant and simple and also quietly sinister, featuring only a coiled, black snake and a pink, desert sky. This was my first Didion novel, and hearing so much about her, I was excited to delve into her apparently-powerful prose. And it was powerful, packing so many emotions and raw, purely-human interactions into one short, punchy novel that will stay with me for a very long time.

The plot of this book is relatively simple, so it relies on the development of the tightly-woven cast of characters to move the story along. We begin with a first-person monologue by Maria (Mar-eye-a) who has been admitted to a psychiatric facility to recover from a mental breakdown that the rest of the novel will lead up to. After the opening monologues by Maria, her friend Helene, and her ex-husband Carter, the remainder of the narrative is told in a close third person that follows Maria as her marriage crumbles, her daughter is sequestered away in a hospital, and her friends all proceed to royally screw up each other’s lives.

While the characters and the ever-shifting relationships between them make up a bulk of the story, the setting- 1960s LA and the surrounding desert- almost acts as a separate character itself, as it sprawls around Maria and seems to swallow her up. After escaping a small town in Nevada for New York City, Maria becomes an actress and a model, but she quickly retires her life as a model when she marries Carter, a film director, and is sucked into the vacuous, artificial world of Hollywood. While Carter initially helped Maria to get a few meager roles, her Hollywood career starts to wane and the veneer of their marriage seems to wear off, as the couple grapples with the reality that is their empty lives.

The book weaves such a potent image of complete desolation, you start to understand why Maria ends up the way she does. Everything in her life lacks meaning. Her personal interactions seem rife with the duplicity of fake friendship. Her husband is constantly absent while working on movies. Men are worried about using artificial lemon in their drinks, and women are worried that their hairdresser is out of town. Around every corner, a snake lies in waiting to snap at Maria and cause her to tumble further in her downward spiral toward complete nihilism. Maria even spends most of her days aimlessly driving along the freeway with no destination, mirroring her complete directionlessness in life. And while she was teetering on the edge of collapse, one heart-wrenching loss sends her crashing over and into oblivion (what it is, you’ll have to read to find out).

A complaint that many people have about this novel is that they don’t like Maria enough to care about her emotional turmoil throughout the book. And it’s true, at some points, I couldn’t understand why she said certain things or acted in certain ways, but in other moments, like those where the book talks about her daughter in the hospital, show so much warmth and tenderness and emotional honesty that I can’t help but feel for her. In a way, I can relate to Maria’s pessimistic vision of life as a highway stretching into a desert riddled with rattlesnakes waiting to uncoil their twisting, sun-baked bodies and punish you for venturing out. I can also relate to her attitude that she should still go on anyways. While her equally-nihilistic friend BZ asks “Why?” she asks “Why not?” which reveals her warm, molten core that is not dead yet.

All of this to say that the book is a stunner that will leave you breathless at some points with its, short, laser-focused chapters that come in hot and burn out just as quickly like a firework. I finished the book in just a couple of sittings because it flowed that easily. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone that wants to read something that not only has wicked prose, but will also leave an impression on you.

I’m looking forward to reading more Didion.