What Is The Plot To The Book, Play It As It Lays?

In Joan Didion's 1970 novel Play It As It Lays, the protagonist is a twice-married 31-year-old former model-turned-film star named Maria Wyeth Lang, whose mental monologues are followed by reminisces by her second husband, failed filmmaker Carter Lang and her friend Helene. These are Maria's recollections while she is recovering from a mental breakdown in a neuropsychiatric care centre. The reason for her mental breakdown is apparently her purported role in the death of her friend, the bisexual film producer B.Z., who has committed suicide. This is the story of Maria's traumatic journey from Silver Wells, a small town in Nevada, where she was born to a father who was addicted to gambling and a neurotic mother who apparently died in a car accident, to Tonopah. She graduated from high school, and finally went to New York to make it big as an actress. New York is also the town where she met her first husband Ivan Costello, who lived off her money and blackmailed her.

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