by Joan Didion
First published 1980
Maria Wyeth drives the freeways of Los Angeles, counting the miles as her marriage crumbles and her acting career stalls. Her husband Carter, a film director, has left her. Her young daughter Kate lives in a psychiatric facility. Maria moves through Hollywood parties and empty encounters, seeking something solid in a world that feels increasingly unreal. The hot asphalt and neon signs of California frame her days as she navigates divorce proceedings, casual affairs, and the shallow promises of the entertainment industry. Friends offer advice she cannot take. Doctors provide pills that do not heal. Maria continues driving, searching for direction on roads that lead nowhere. Didion places her protagonist at the center of a culture coming apart, where traditional anchors have loosened and new ones have not yet formed. The novel captures Maria's struggle to find meaning when the old rules no longer apply and the new ones make no sense.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: character-driven, unreliable-narrator
Setting: California, Hollywood, Los Angeles
Period: 20th-century
Paperback · Pocket
Content warnings: mental-illness