A profoundly disturbing novel that ruthlessly dissects American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking.

Benny called for a round of Cuba Libres and I gave him some chips to play for me and went to the ladies' room and never came back.

Somewhere out beyond Hollywood, hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeth's life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. In her early thirties, divorced from her husband, dislocated from friends, anesthetized to pain and please, Wheth is a woman who has run out of both desires and motives - the epitome of a generation made ill by too much freedom.

 

Details

ISBN: 9780007414987
Audience: General
Format: Paperback
Number of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 10 Nov 2011
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.8(H) x 12.9(L) x 1.4(W)
Weight (gm): 150

 

Reviews

'She writes with a razor ... You are both frightened and astonished ... It seems to me just about perfect, so heartbreaking and inescapable' New York Times

'Didion's modant lucidity is like L.A. sunlight, a thing so bright sometimes it hurts' Time, Top 100 Novels of All Time

'For a few decades, this was my favourite modern American novel ... revelatory' Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho

 

Author Biography

Joan Didion is one of America's most respected writers, her work constituting some of the greatest portraits of modern-day American culture. Over the four decades of her career, she has produced widely-acclaimed journalistic essays, personal essays, novels, non-fiction, memoir and screenplays. Her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking won the National Book Award in 2005.