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Play It As It Lays
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
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Publisher's Summary
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, 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 listener. 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.
Critic Reviews
"Simple, restrained, intelligent, well-structured, witty, irresistibly relentless, forthright in diction, and untainted by the sensational, Play It As It Lays is a book of outstanding literary quality." ( Library Journal)
"[A] scathing novel, distilling venom in tiny drops, revealing devastation in a sneer and fear in a handful of atomic dust." (J. R. Frakes, Book World)
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What listeners say about Play It As It Lays
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Darwin8u
- 02-07-17
Snakes and cracks everywhere
"I was raised to believe that what came in on the next roll would always be better than what when out on the last. I no longer believe that."
- Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays
Warning: This book is not to be read if suicidal, heavily medicated, driving, pregnant, or if you ever dream of walking out, alone, into the Nevada desert and not coming back. This book is pure existential peril. I remember when I was four being specifically afraid of our church's bathroom. I remember thinking the church was hallowed ground. Protected by some benign force. Nothing could get me in the church. I was safe. But I'd sit alone, in a stall, in the bathroom, and look at the white tile, white grout, and see the dark drain on the floor. I'd imagine all the terror that existed under the Church. The snakes that were waiting to crawl through the drain. The devil waiting to pull me into the unsanctified, unhallowed, shit-filled sewers. Yeah, this book made me think of that empty feeling, that feeling that even in safe places there were gaps, snakes, sewers, and darkness.
This book also reminds me a bit of a combination of The Great Gatsby (but told by Daisy in California in the 1960s) and Less Than Zero (but told by Blair and Julian's parents). Actually, hell, the book could be F. Scott and Zelda in the 1960s. Anyway, I get a weird F. Scott and Bret Easton Ellis vibe, with perhaps just a little of Cormac McCarthy's cold Western, existential dread thrown in for flavor. It is one of those novels that is near perfect and also a razor blade under your tongue. It is dangerous and sharp and makes you nervous to find out what is next.
There are snakes and cracks everywhere. Plants die. Memory fades. Nothing matters. Well, O.K. Joan Didion's prose matters. It matters a hell of a lot. Joan Didion's prose just might be one reason to keep living. To keep fighting. To keep turning the damn page and rolling the damn dice.
46 people found this helpful
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- Zain
- 06-17-18
Great story, bad performance.
Whenever I felt like drifting into the story, I was pulled back up again hearing the narrator's exaggerated tones of male voices. Not all men sound raggedy, or at least they don't have to be. There's something off and unnatural about the narrator's impersonations of all the male characters. Too bad since this was the most peculiar and disturbingly profound book I've read this year.
6 people found this helpful
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- Patricia
- 02-22-15
Absolutely Worst Audiobook I've Ever Heard
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
If the woman reading this book had read it in a less cartoonishly animated voice
What did you like best about this story?
It's an amazing story, Didion is an all-around prolific writer
What didn’t you like about Lauren Fortgang’s performance?
She clearly had absolutely no understanding of the tone of the book. She sounded like she was reading strawberry shortcake children's book. Her voice is awful.
Any additional comments?
Honestly, I think that this woman's reading was utterly ridiculous. I plan to unsubscribe from audible because I can't believe that anyone would ask me to pay for such an outrageously bad performance.
18 people found this helpful
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- Key
- 05-26-19
An existential jewel ruined by the narrator
The narrator's interpretation of this classic was off the mark by a mile. That and mispronouncing main characters' names (Maria for Mariah, Helen for Helene) made me cringe more than listen.
6 people found this helpful
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- Darryl
- 04-28-13
a bit existential and good
the episodic structure made me think of Kosinski and there is something a little Hemingway-ish about it. It is a quick listen, a tapestry type effect that builds together and not everything is explained away. life is messy and some people get a little lost and the main woman, Mariah, has lost her footing. there are a lot of bits that you have to add up for yourself and the whole mosaic is puzzling, a little of the nature vs. nurture thing maybe, and the user atmosphere of relationships, and the disconnected bonds of relationships. interesting.
6 people found this helpful
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- Jose
- 10-11-21
terrible book
The narrator was great. The story was just completely boring, confusing and stupid. Got bored and sleepy multiple times. Would not recommend and would never read again.
1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 04-16-21
A slim but impactful listen
Play It As It Lays is a somber book about a successful but unhappy world in and out of LA as seen through the eyes of Joan Didion. It’s depressing at times but written in a way that you can still enjoy it. A combo I can’t think many books have pulled off. Enjoy
1 person found this helpful
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- Paul Frandano
- 02-11-21
Play It As A Lay...
...would be more like it. Beaucoups of that going on, as Maria (NB: mar-EYE-ah, and don't you forget it) begins her swirl around the drainpipe. Familiar themes are explored: loneliness, detatchment from...is it reality? Or oneself? Both?..., casual, almost anonymous sex, drugs, and alcohol, marriage, motherhood, madness, and, of course, the icky film industry, with its list of ceaseless preoccupations: the breaks, funding, the casting couch, the vaguely crooked movers and shakers, writing and writers, scripts in limbo, aging out of roles, in a veritable Hollywood Babylon, minus Kenneth Anger's mordant humor (but still with splashes of corrosive Didionesque humor) and a long cast of unlikeable characters, all of whom, even the women, are brutally unforgiving misogynists. Moreover, Didion (herself a screenwriter) writes this in scenes...following a 3-part prologue of 3 soliloquies, we have 84 short chapters,mostly in 3rd person, all together a nearly ideal script length...(and yes, there is a movie, but no, I haven't seen it, bit will).
I find myself talking this novel up to five stars, but I'll leave it at 4.5, rounding down. Will perhaps come to my senses on a reread and rate it a sublime 5...
I alternately read and listen, and sometimes read AND listen. Narrator Lauren Fortgang is a fine voice actor who gives Didion's numerous cast of characters distinctive voicings. A pleasure. Recommend, though, having a text close at hand. Didion is for me and for tens of thousands of other admiring readers an essential writer of beautifully distinctive prose and deserves our respect for her printed words.
1 person found this helpful
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- Dobbs
- 02-07-22
Terrific
Great book, perfectly narrator. Not even remotely aware of what someone could find fault with in the narration.
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- jess
- 01-02-22
beautifully written
loved it, start to finish. the way Joan Didion weilded words is unmatched. the reading was excellent, highly recommend