Cool. Cold. Ice. Maria Wyeth's character and Joan Didion.
The precise prose and the white space between spare chapters convey a nothing. Nothing, white spaces, the white noise of air conditioners and freeway traffic run through this novel of the new Hollywood of the late sixties.
So much of the novel seems adapted from real life, from Maria's character, to B.Z as Dominick Dunne, to the final scene. Without the prose styling, I'm not sure there a great story here. Is it a story about a nothing, a decent into depression or insanity similar to the Bell Jar, or the emptiness of LA life?
Sex, drugs, abortion, wife swapping, homosexuality, assisted suicide - they are all here in this 1970 novel.
"Maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?"
That's the chill.