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Title: You'll never forget this one.
Review: "Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily," wrote La Rochefoucauld. Joan Didion looks unflinchingly at the Void. "I know what 'nothing' means," says the heroine, "and keep on playing."On one level this is a "Hollywood novel," and as such its wicked satire is worthy of comparison to Nathanael West's "Day of the Locust." Combine that book with Sartre's "Nausea" and you begin to get an idea of what "Play It As It Lays" accomplishes."We could definitely stand a few giggles," says one of the characters. You won't find any in this book. What you will find is a protagonist whose mantra might come from Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus": "Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it."Grim stuff, to be sure, but brilliantly done. There is a great deal of white space in this book, because there are scores of short chapters, and because Didion has a rare quality: she doesn't write one word more than necessary. And what she writes will go straight to the core of your being.
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