Of all skills in the world, one that likely ranks as "useless" or "impractical" is consuming media about people who cannot find meaning in their lives. A person who possesses this skill may, with high probability, find themselves reading Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion. The subject of the book is a Hollywood actress named Maria (pronounced Mar-eye-a) Wyeth who has a flagging career and a messy personal life. The novel explores her thoughts and actions in this situation. 
 A word one may use to describe Maria Wyeth is "numb." Another word is "fearful." That she exhibits qualities associated with the former word alienates her. That she exhibits qualities associated with the latter word makes her troubled while alone. This leads to a desire for interaction, and the cycle starts again. This cycle is broken by the end of the novel. That the cycle is broken should be taken to mean that Maria's life settles into uniformity in emotion. This consolidation is the point of the book and is most accurately described as captivating. 
 Didion's Hollywood is cold and uncaring. It is a place where judgments are made by the confident, while the meek are left to suffer mostly alone. Support exists, but is infrequent and unhelpful. 
 ...trouble was something no one in the city liked to be near. Failure, illness, fear, they were seen as infectious, contagious blights on glossy plants. It seemed to Maria that even the receptionist was avoiding her eyes, fearing contamination.This view of the world is not unique. It is even more not unique when describing Hollywood. The way Maria interacts with this world is somewhat unique. This way is in the manner of someone who is trapped but resigned to being such, primarily due to severe exhaustion. 
 The reader's interaction with this book can be compared to Maria's interaction with her world. The reader may feel trapped. But also the reader may not feel negatively about this. One reason for this is Didion's writing, which blends factual declarations with moments of clarity and description which are, by most accounts, beautiful. Maria's emotional state is conveyed either explicitly through statements or more explicitly by the absence of such statements. 
 Put another way, Didion is concerned, in this book, with conveying a human mind in crisis. She does so in a manner which is able, an aspect which the reader may find pleasing, but, also, terrifying, an aspect which may invoke further words like "oppressive" and "haunting." Some may find that these words are descriptive of their own lives, or, all lives. 
 "I'm not crying," she said, and she was not.