The members of Becky's book club in Pacific Palisades couldn't stand “Play It as It Lays.” Snakes, highways, difficult men, and Didion's quiet brutality hang in the air like the oppressive heat of this unusually warm spring day. At his feet, a majestic Airedale terrier named Phoebe rests, as if she belongs in an oil painting.
“If I had read this book before coming to Los Angeles, I never would have come,” says Raymee Olin Weiman, one of the book club members. She is an energetic conversationalist who finally grants Didion a compliment. “I didn't like it, but I felt compelled to read it because the writing is so brilliant.”
Becky Nedelman, an 85-year-old woman who organizes the book club, agrees. “For me, Maria is when you go through an accident and you don't want to look, but you do,” she says of Didion's troubled, aimless protagonist.
Amy Silverberg, the book club facilitator (who is also a Times contributor and friend of this reporter) had warned the group the previous month that they might cringe at the disturbing novel. When she walked through the door, they confirmed Silverberg's fears and immediately expressed their displeasure. “It's your fault,” he tells them with a smile. “I want to reiterate that.”
For all their grievances with Didion's fiction, the women's lives bear a striking resemblance to Didion's. Some of the women in the book club are older than the late author Joan Didion, who would have been 91 years old. Some of them are over 90 years old, except for Gail Heltzer, “the baby of the group”, as they call her, who is 83 years old.
The book club is made up of old friends who have been meeting to talk about literature for more than 25 years. Long-standing book clubs in Los Angeles are a rarity: Many disappear due to waning interest, scheduling conflicts, and waning enthusiasm. That hasn't been the case with Becky's Book Club, which still sparks lively discussions at every meeting.
The gathering, which takes place in women's homes, has endured through every phase of their lives: marriages, motherhood, and even illnesses.
Nancy de Brier and Barbara Smith laugh during their book club meeting.
(Ariana Drehsler / for The Times)
“Unfortunately, the only way we've lost members is by passing away or moving,” says Becky Nedelman.
Today they are at Emily Lawrence's house, where she has prepared peanut butter cookies and an elaborate cheese board for the occasion.
With each passing year, the sentimental value only increases.
“The longer it goes on, the more important we become to each other. We're at the age where we occasionally lose friends; we lose husbands; a lot of us have done it. So this is very important,” says Nancy deBrier, one of the members. The group attributes the book club's lasting success to its organizer, Becky Nedelman.
Nedelman has organized the book club over the decades, inviting women from different areas of her life, including investment clubs and Planned Parenthood organizing along with high school classmates. In the end, he chose members who took the books seriously.
Host Emily Lawrence with her copy of “Play It as It Lays” by Joan Didion.
(Ariana Drehsler / for The Times)
“We wanted to be with a group of women who were really readers. We didn't come to talk about recipes or children and grandchildren, but we really wanted to focus on the book,” Nedelman says.
Since June 2001, the group has read 252 books together and has kept a detailed record of each book. The group reads mostly contemporary literature, but once a year they tackle a classic, or “depresser,” as they call them.
They find “Apeirogon” by Colum McCann and “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans particularly interesting. They read “Anna Karenina” and “Crime and Punishment,” an experience they agree was challenging but rewarding. His comments are astute and candid, even when they are critical. “Are any of the classics funny?” asks Harriet Eilber.
What makes a book club work so well for more than two decades? Gail Heltzer attributes this to the group's open-mindedness and inherent chemistry. “Everyone is willing to read a wide variety of books on different topics. We don't reject any ideas,” says Heltzer. “Everyone has opinions and is extremely respectful, and everyone leaves smarter.”
The book club has encouraged women to reconnect with reading later in life. DeBrier, who has a master's degree and practices law, explains that reading has been a gift throughout her life. “My reading life after college was much more interesting in many ways,” he says. “You will discover that that is the good thing in life, right? It is very enriching to continue reading.”
“His open-mindedness at his age is really inspiring to me,” Silverberg says. “I hope to have that open-mindedness when I'm 80 and 90. What's a better path to open-mindedness than reading?”
To ensure the book club runs efficiently with fascinating discussions, the women have enlisted the help of Literary Affairs, a Los Angeles-based company that provides facilitators at more than 50 book clubs in Los Angeles. Facilitators often have exceptional literary resumes; many are novelists and have doctorates in literature. Silverberg, a Becky's Book Club facilitator, is also a novelist and comedian and has worked for Literary Affairs for five years. Last year, her first novel, “First Time, Long Time,” was published, and the book club attended her book launch at Skylight Books in Los Feliz to offer support.
“Whether they like the book or not, they are always willing to turn the page,” Silverberg says of the group. He enjoys the hour and a half he spends discussing literature with them. “They make me think about a book differently and I appreciate that. They let me argue with them. I'm always on the side of the book.”
The book club has been meeting for over 25 years and has read over 250 books.
(Ariana Drehsler / for The Times)
During today's discussion, Silverberg boldly defends “Play as is.” The women look back at him with sullen but intrigued faces. Silverberg reads a passage from the novel to the group. His voice is light but insistent. “She's at the mercy of the men in her life,” Silverberg says.
“That was in the '60s,” Weiman responds. Despite her initial resistance, Didion's writings bring buried memories to the surface. The novels sometimes evoke memories of women's lives, provoking moving and often vulnerable discussions. DeBrier reflects on her own experience of motherhood in the 1960s. “I was having a baby; I didn't know what existential meant,” she says.
Later, the women share memories about the sociopolitical issues of the 1960s: birth control, homosexuality, and the Vietnam War. They maintain that they had a hope that contrasts with that of Didion's protagonist.
“As bad as things were during the war, I didn't see everything as bleak,” Heltzer says. “I knew we were going to keep trying and that people would help move the nation.”
The conversation turns to a broader reflection on femininity.
“I was always free-minded about what I wanted to do. It wasn't until I was 20, when I got married, that I realized I had options in my marriage,” Weiman reflects. She feels that Didion's novel urges women to reconnect with themselves, using the protagonist Maria as a warning. “What she did then was a gift to all women: write this novel.”
At the end of the book club, the women engage in pleasant conversation. They flutter around the cheese board and crackers. Emily Lawrence displays her collection of William Carlos Williams poetry in the first edition. He has a growing collection of books that he would like to donate to the Palisades Branch Library, which was destroyed in the 2025 fires. With Lawrence's donations, his goal is for the Palisades to begin enjoying new stories, new characters, and new beginnings after the disaster. Perhaps evoking an oft-cited Didion quote: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line over disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, that is our real experience.”
Connors is a writer living in Los Angeles. She is the host of the literary reading event. Unreliable narrators at Nico's Wines in Atwater Village every month.
