Maria Wyeth is a thirty-year-old former actress living in Los Angeles who spends her days driving the California freeway system in a silver Corvette. Her life is defined by a series of clinical and social traumas: a forced illegal abortion, the institutionalization of her daughter Kate, and a failing marriage to a fickle film director. Set against the harsh desert sunlight and the hollow parties of the Hollywood elite, the narrative follows Maria’s psychological disintegration as she confronts the absolute randomness of suffering and the disappearance of moral cause and effect.
Readers drawn to nihilistic literature and lean, minimalist prose use this book to examine the mechanics of emotional numbness and the reality of existential dread. It appeals to those interested in the cultural landscape of the late 1960s and the specific geography of the American West. The reader departs with a stark perspective on personal autonomy in a world devoid of inherent meaning, observing a protagonist who continues to function simply because the alternative offers no greater logic.
- Published
- 1970
- Language
- EN
