Play It As It Lays

Maria Wyeth Lang, the novel’s protagonist, is a 31-year-old actress who lives in Beverly Hills. When the novel opens, Maria relates some biographical facts about herself. Her name is pronounced “Mar-eye-ah” and she dislikes it when the staff in Neuropsychiatric call her “Mrs. Lang,” which is her ex-husband’s surname.

Maria is thin and attractive but seems uninterested in her looks. When describing how she moved from her hometown of Silver Wells, Nevada, to New York City to begin acting, she says, “I looked alright (I’m not telling you I was blessed or cursed, I’m telling a fact, I know it from all the pictures)” (8). Her friend Helene comments: “She never puts on any weight, you’ll notice that’s often true of selfish women” (11). At one point, when Maria has been struggling with depression after her abortion, Carter asks, “What do you weigh now? About 82?” (175). This detail is shocking because Maria has never commented on her own physical state. The thing Maria cares least about, her looks, is what others notice and care about most.

Only the first and last sections of the novel are told from Maria’s first-person perspective. The rest of the novel’s third-person narration focuses on Maria’s inner world.