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Marc Koralnik
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INNOCENTS AND OTHERS

Dana Spiotta

A master at encapsulating the corrosive nature of fame, technology, and the tyranny of the body, Spiotta takes us to the Los Angeles and Brooklyn of the eighties and today in an ambitious and unforgettable novel about the way we live now.
DANA SPIOTTA'S FOURTH NOVEL – a heartbreaking and exhilarating examination of culture, self-image, and intimacy – follows the lives of Meadow and Carrie, two best friends who grew up together in Los Angeles and now work as filmmakers. Meadow makes documentaries, while Carrie makes successful feature films with a feminist slant. They question each other's choices; each disappoints the other. And yet their loyalty trumps their different approaches to film and to life.

Until they encounter Jelly – an older, mysterious woman who cold calls powerful men and seduces them, not through sex but simply through listening, all the while pretending to be someone she is not.

DANA SPIOTTA is the author of STONE ARABIA (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction); EAT THE DOCUMENT (finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction); and LIGHTNING FIELD. Spiotta received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the Rome Prize for Literature.
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Book

Published 2016-03-01 by Scribner

Comments

“Innocents and Others combines the pace of a page-turner with the bravura of an avant-garde feature film.” Read more...

Actes Sud

"Innocents And Others" is one of those uncanny novels whose characters and ideas linger long after the story is over. In the end, Spiotta's portrayal of artistic idealism and ambition is unexpectedly moving. As Meadow would say, what a mystery the way things act on us. — Maureen Corrigan, NPR Read more...

At the conclusion, the reader is left with a multitude of questions to consider. Among them: Can an artist live an enriching life without having an audience? It's a tough question to answer, but it's certain that Spiotta's audience will keep growing with this stunning novel. Read more...

Wydawnictwo Kobiece

“A brilliant, riddling clip-montage of the friendship between two very different filmmakers [...] Highbrow and lowbrow have cohabitated before, of course, but rarely with this ease or this empathy.”

Robert Ammerlaan

“Brilliant an extremely clever novel, about art, identity and ideas.” Read more...

"Spiotta explores the remarkable species of sisterhood that survives jealousy and disappointment and even years of neglect. The tension between artistic purity and commercial popularity may tax their affection, but nothing can blot out their shared history, their abiding devotion, the great wonder that is a true friend." Read more...

Excerpt, 7000 words Read more...

“Every sentence is full of information and verve, jumping with thoughtfulness and precision and, like that flash of white teeth, the unexpected.” Read more...

Turner Libros

Eunhangnamu

Picador

"Dana Spiotta is one of my favorite living writers and in this wondrous and mysterious novel, a spectacular and subtle meditation on sight and sound, she seems almost to channel Jean-Luc Godard: Innocents and Others, like classic JLG, is brilliant, and erotic, and pop.”—

"'Innocents and Others' Is a 'Thelma & Louise'-esque Must Read" Read more...

“Full of risks Spiotta's risks do pay off, though, and this is how and why: because her characters are so self-conscious about the perils and joys of friendship and filmmaking and about understanding how the stories one sees on the screen come to influence — and at times, infect — the story one tells to, and about, oneself INNOCENTS AND OTHERS is riveting.” Read more...

"Dana Spiotta is one of my favorite living writers and in this wondrous and mysterious novel, a spectacular and subtle meditation on sight and sound, she seems almost to channel Jean-Luc Godard: Innocents and Others, like classic JLG, is brilliant, and erotic, and pop.”—

The Quietly Subversive Fictions of Dana Spiotta Over the course of her career, the author has created a new kind of Great American Novel. Read more...

Q&A Read more...

La Nave di Teseo

"Well-to-do, arty Meadow and middle-class, low-key Carrie meet as schoolmates in Los Angeles and bond over their passion for film, then follow divergent paths. In the era of CDs and phone phreaking (an early form of hacking), Meadow, a purist enthralled by documentaries, uses old equipment to get the right look and ambiance as she pursues stories of devastating impact, ranging from Argentina's Dirty War to a mysterious woman who seduced Hollywood insiders over the phone, only to cut them off when they asked to meet her in person. Austere and solitary, Meadow is all-but-worshiped for her rigorous and unflinching films until she is suddenly reviled for her alleged fascination with monsters. Carrie, a mother and wife, makes popular, covertly subversive women-focused comedies. National Book Award finalist Spiotta ( Stone Arabia, 2011) brings to new levels of feverish intensity her signature dissection of obsession, the trends and ironies of the zeitgeist, how we document our lives, and the consequences of resistance to social imperatives in this ensnaring, sly, and fiercely intelligent novel, from which readers can extract a cineast's dream watch list. A novel for readers thrilled by Jennifer Egan, Siri Hustvedt, Rachel Kushner, and Claire Messud, Spiatto's deeply inquiring tale is about looking and listening, freedom and obligation, our dire hunger for illusion, and our profound need for friendship. — Donna SeamanWell-to-do, arty Meadow and middle-class, low-key Carrie meet as schoolmates in Los Angeles and bond over their passion for film, then follow divergent paths. In the era of CDs and phone phreaking (an early form of hacking), Meadow, a purist enthralled by documentaries, uses old equipment to get the right look and ambiance as she pursues stories of devastating impact, ranging from Argentina's Dirty War to a mysterious woman who seduced Hollywood insiders over the phone, only to cut them off when they asked to meet her in person. Austere and solitary, Meadow is all-but-worshiped for her rigorous and unflinching films until she is suddenly reviled for her alleged fascination with monsters. Carrie, a mother and wife, makes popular, covertly subversive women-focused comedies. National Book Award finalist Spiotta Stone Arabia, 2011) brings to new levels of feverish intensity her signature dissection of obsession, the trends and ironies of the zeitgeist, how we document our lives, and the consequences of resistance to social imperatives in this ensnaring, sly, and fiercely intelligent novel, from which readers can extract a cineast's dream watch list. A novel for readers thrilled by Jennifer Egan, Siri Hustvedt, Rachel Kushner, and Claire Messud, Spiatto's deeply inquiring tale is about looking and listening, freedom and obligation, our dire hunger for illusion, and our profound need for friendship. — Donna Seaman (starred review)

Innocents and Others is more expansive, but the same omniscient intelligence is employed in layering ironies and superimposing themes of memory, identity, reality and representation while building toward the two women's inevitable convergence

"She writes with a breezy precision and genuine wit that put her on a short list of brilliant North American novelists who deserve a much wider audience -— writers like Lisa Moore, Tom Drury and Paul Beatty. And it's rare to find a novel that is so much fun and, at the same time, seeks emotional truth with such intellectual rigor; it adds up to an original and strangely moving book." Read more...

"What a thrilling ride. And what a delight to be at the receiving end of so much virtuosic caring. A daring and beautiful meditation about selfishness and selflessness, and how to be in the world. A powerful book that will stay with me and continue to speak to me for a long time. Spiotta is a wonder."-George Saunders, author of Tenth of December

"Dana Spiotta's new book is a literary marvel that employs the dominant medium of our time to rout out both the impulse to make worlds alternate to the one we occupy and the darkest spots in the human heart. As Don DeLillo did for rock and roll with Great Jones St., so Spiotta does for film with Innocents and Others. Spiotta is emerging as perhaps the major contender for fiction's next generation. Her aim is nothing less than redemption, and she delivers."