Play It As It Lays

2 Pages 622 Words

PLAY IT AS IT LAYS
By: Joan Didion

This is the story of a famous actress and a period in her life where everything was chaos.
Maria the actress name, seem to be a women that had married a movie director or producer name Carter. Her life with him was complicated. It seemed that they both had a promiscuous life, her more than him. There was a lot of careless sex, drugs and alcohol. At the same time there seemed to be a lot of psychological difficulties.
The book starts by giving a description of the characters, by showing a scene of their lives.
Maria, who seems to be a very disturbed person, starts by commenting that she has slept with another man and that now she is pregnant. She seems very confused, having mix feelings about the pregnancy. She already has a daughter that as I understood correctly is mentally disabled and lives in a hospital. I think Maria believes that this baby would probably be born the same and she also worries what Carter reaction is going to be when he finds out that is not his. She goes back and forth with this feelings of sadness and confusions, and she does certain things like sleep outside in the open air because is too hot, or wake up and just drive all day until there is no where else to go. When she finally decides to tell Carter about the pregnancy he tells her that she needs to get rid of it. In those times having an abortion was unheard of, especially if you are a celebrity. She called someone and when to take care of it, at some motel in a different city. After that she went through a very rough depression, drinking and doing drugs, she was so unaware of her surroundings that her relationship with Carter got worse, it seemed also that he used to physically abuse her so they decided to get divorced.
After that she still work, and she did not see many people, she had shut everyone out of her life. She realized how damaging her life was and seemed not to want that for her anymore. Later she dec...