Play It As It Lays: Everyone Needs Therapy

I was not expecting to like this book as much as I did. I also read the whole thing in one sitting, which is usually a good sign that it didn’t suck.

Embarrassingly, this is my first foray into Joan Didion. (You’d think someone with a Creative Writing degree and a healthy dose of narcissism would already be her biggest fan.)

I usually have an issue with characters who are depressed but just let things happen to them instead of trying to climb out of that depression in any way. But there was something extremely compelling about Maria for me (also, just add the H, dammit). I didn’t find her blasé personality to be annoying or overdone, but rather found myself empathizing with her a lot of the time.

General thoughts: Depression encapsulated

Play It As It Lays was an excellent look at the “other” side of Hollywood: the people who haven’t quite made it, or they did make it and then lost it, and all the people who fall through the cracks of the film industry.

Didion’s treatment of alcoholism and addiction was interesting, too. A lot of the time, writers in that niche tend to go too far in one direction: either showcasing the diehard party lifestyle too much or over-dramatizing the descent into the horrors of addiction.

But Didion struck a perfect balance — the influences of alcohol, dependency, and depression were all obvious, but none overplayed. I won’t say who dies, but there is a suicide at one point in the book that’s shown very artfully. (Maybe because she simply alluded to it more so than drawing out exactly how it happened.)

Critical thoughts: You don’t have to like your narrator

To me, this was an excellent example of taking an unlikeable narrator and forcing the reader to empathize with her.

A major failing I’ve noticed in some YA books (and some classics, too — *cough cough Holden Caulfield cough*) is that the main character / narrator is simply too annoying, whiny, or self-obsessed to make the reader care.

I can’t tell you the number of books I’ve struggled through because I couldn’t empathize with the main character. And I really thought this was going to be another example — but instead, I found myself rooting for Maria even as I found her slightly disgusting and more than a little unhinged.

I want to read more of Joan Didion’s books now, but given the enormity of the project I’ve signed myself up for, she might have to wait a couple of months. :)

Til next time,
Maggie