Play It As It Lays

Maria Wyeth, an actress in Los Angeles, is stumbling through her life after the trauma of an abortion that was forced on her by her husband. Her marriage ends, as does the love affair she was involved in, and she is unable to prevent the suicide of a good friend. Clinging to her only child, a mentally damaged daughter named Kate, the nihilistic Maria struggles to stay afloat in a world marked by shallow frivolity and a complete absence of values. Much of the story centers on Maria's compulsive driving through the Mojave Desert, as she meditates on the hollowness of the film world and, by extension, American culture. Joan Didion's lean and cool-headed novel was a sensation when it was originally published in 1971.