Play It as It Lays

Maria Wyeth is thirty-one, out of work and living inside a psychiatric facility. From there she tells the story of how she got committed, working backward through the years that led her to it.

She grew up in a dying gambling town in Nevada, then tried to make it as an actress in New York. She married Carter Lang, a director, who put her in his films until the marriage fell apart. Their daughter Kate lives in an institution with disabilities the book never names, and Maria can hardly bear to look at the fact.

After the separation, Maria spends her days on the freeways of Southern California, driving to keep her anxiety behind her. Carter then forces her into an illegal abortion, holding access to Kate over her as a bargaining chip. Grief and numbness harden into isolation, drinking and pills, and the account builds to a night when a friend dies in her arms.

The novel dates from 1970 and is counted as a landmark of the nihilism in the literature of its era. The prose is spare and the narrative fragmented, told in short pieces that mirror a mind refusing to settle. Reading it is bleak and cool in tone, with very little comfort offered.