Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion


PIAIL was probably not a clever reading choice for my recent stint in a hospital waiting room. Grim, grim, and more grim. Didion set a new benchmark for depressing novellas set in the 70s when she penned the story of 31-year-old Maria Wyeth, an out of work actress recovering from the mental breakdown she suffered after purportedly participating in a movie producer friend's suicide. Click here for the 1972 film adaptation's trailer, featuring actress Tuesday Weld.

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