A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Joan
Didion's Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation,
the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters
and haunts the reader.
Set in a place beyond good and evil---literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas,
and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the
landscape of an arid soul---it remains more than three decades after its
original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its
exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the
still-startling intensity of its prose.