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Title: Play It As It Lays : A Novel by Joan Didion ISBN: 0-374-52171-9 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.07 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: book critique for school
Comment: At some time in many people lives, they reach a point where they ask themselves, what's the purpose of life; in Joan Didion's book, "Play It As It Lays", Maria Wyeth, the main character, finds herself asking that very same question. Didion's book follows Maria's journey through this point in her life, examing her feelings, thoughts and actions.
"Play It As It Lays," takes place in Hollywood in the late 1960's. It's written from a struggling actress's point of view. She's reached a crossroads in her life and pushes everything to the side for a while. Focusing on nothing in particular, her friends begin to think she's lost her mind, when all she wants is to make a little sense of her hectic surroundings. "I know what 'nothing' means, and keep on playing."(214) The setting that Joan Didion chose to use really defines the story. Hollywood itself, no matter what time era, has its own personalities, moods and excitement. The late 1960's, was a time of contemporary society, the culture was characterized by emptiness and ennui. As the characters are all part of the entertainment business, their lives revolve around attaining a certain level of social standings, and this in term sometimes leads to mental breakdowns. Their lives set the mood and the atmosphere within the story. Didion's style of characterization does an excellent job of developing the setting, as well as revealing the theme over time.
Rating: 5
Summary: A fantstic novel about a dark, sepulchral, unsettling life.
Comment: What would life be like if it was meaningless, if the people we associated with were plastic? not real? pretentious? What if our life was just a hopeless void with loose morals, drugs, hollow sayings and beliefs? What if we just played the empty game of life as it was laid down for us? That is the main theme in Joan Didion's classic book that takes the reader into the life of Maria Wyeth, actress, mother, daughter, divorced wife, a woman who has grown tired and desensitized to the fakeness and pain caused by the Hollywood and Las Vegas establishment.It is a life filled to the brim with movie premiers, booze, pills, suicide, casual, empty sex, abortions and nothing else. It is a world of plastic surgery and beautiful people, of Let's do lunch and venomous gossip. The sneering, caustic tone of Didion's voice would want to make anybody who lived the lives of the novel's characters put a gun to their head and end it all. The language is stinging, fast-paced, lean, anti-Hollywood. Pure Didion!
Rating: 2
Summary: Not particularly memorable
Comment: The story is as hollow and forgettable as the character the book is about. It's an easy read, and not exactly bad writing, but it didn't grab me and it's not going in my permanent library. If you like reading about vapid people scrapping it out in the film industry, you might like this book. If you like reading about people quite lost in their own lives, you might like this book. Otherwise, find something else.
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Title: Slouching Towards Bethlehem : Essays by Joan Didion ISBN: 0374521727 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The White Album by Joan Didion ISBN: 0374522219 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Where I Was From by JOAN DIDION ISBN: 0679433325 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Run River by Joan Didion ISBN: 0679752501 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 26 April, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Democracy by Joan Didion ISBN: 0679754857 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 25 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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