PLAY IT AS IT LAYS, by
Joan Didion, is a unique tragic novel. Profound philosophical questions are asked, but never answered. No single character is capable of garnering sympathy. Worst of all, it offers no emotional resolution for the reader.
Maria Wyeth is the novel's protagonist, and the character through whom Didion confronts the futility of existence. Maria is an unsuccessful actress whose life is a series of bad decisions and misfortunes. Sex, drugs, and failed marriages mark the passage of time in her world, and the emotional turmoil she suffers is embodied in homosexuality, abortion, and suicide. Her single joy is her four-year-old daughter, but she too is tainted: kept in a mental institution for an unnamed illness. Rather than change her destructive patterns, Maria continues along the mediocre path to which she has become accustomed. For her, life is nothing, and that nothing is sadly sufficient.
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