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DANA SPIOTTA reads from her new novel INNOCENTS AND OTHERS

Innocents and Others (Scribner Book Company)

Scribner is thrilled to announce the publication of National Book Award Finalist Dana Spiotta’s new novel, Innocents and Others. Spiotta’s earlier novels were published to rapturous praise: The New York Times Book Review called Stone Arabia “a work of visceral honesty and real beauty.” Michiko Kakutani, writing in The New York Times, hailed Eat the Document as “stunning… a glittering book that possesses the staccato ferocity of Joan Didion and the historical resonance and razzle-dazzle language of Don DeLillo…A symphonic portrait of three decades of American life.” Innocents and Others is an unforgettable and brilliant novel.
 
Innocents and Others tracks the friendship of two women, both filmmakers: Meadow, who makes art films, and Carrie, who makes commercially successful films with a feminist slant. Their friendship is complicated, but their devotion to each other trumps their wildly different approaches to film and to life.  Interspersed in the novel is the story of Jelly, a master of seduction whose only encounters are on the phone, and Sarah, an unblessed woman who commits a horrible crime. All of these women grapple with the question of how to be good: a good lover, a good friend, a good mother, a good artist. They all fall short, but as they struggle toward an acceptance of their limits, they approach a kind of release. A startlingly acute observer of the way we live now, Spiotta is also masterful at evoking the corrosive nature of fame, technology, and progress, the tyranny of the body, the will to become something, and the longing for connection and meaning.
 
Set in the Los Angeles of the eighties and the Brooklyn and crumbling upstate New York of today, Innocents and Others is an ambitious, wise and beautiful new novel from the “electrifying” Dana Spiotta.  

Praise for Inocents and the Others

“National Book Award finalist Spiotta 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, Spiotta’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, Booklist, STARRED review
 
“A superb, spiky exploration of artistic motivation.”—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review
 
“Spiotta tackles the slippery nature of identity and the destructive pull of desire in her fourth novel—this time through the lens of film…captivating…moving…always thought provoking.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“Spiotta captures the tensions and contradictions of how we live now in this mesmerizing and innovative novel.”—Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com
 
“The brilliant Dana Spiotta had me from page one of Innocents and Others—a lithely intelligent, moving inquiry into the mysterious compositions of art and friendships.”—Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
 
“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.”—Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers and Telex from Cuba
 
“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 Street, 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.”—Mary Karr, author of The Liar’s Club and Lit
 
“This is such a fine novel. Stone Arabia, Spiotta's last book, was a complete thrill. With Innocents and Others she offers even deeper, more crushing insights into the life of the artist: the compromises, the blind will, the personal costs and moral despair. And the heartbreaking friendship at the center of it all! What unfolds is simply flawless and epic.”—Joshua Ferris, author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour 
 
“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 is the author of Stone Arabia, A National Books Critics Circle Award finalist, and Eat the Document, a finalist for the National Book Award. Spiotta is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rome Prize for Literature. She lives in Syracuse, New York.

Event date: 
Thursday, March 10, 2016 - 7:30pm
Event address: 
1818 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Stone Arabia: A Novel By Dana Spiotta Cover Image
$17.00
ISBN: 9781451617979
Availability: Not in Stock. Available to Order.
Published: Scribner - July 10th, 2012

Eat the Document: A Novel By Dana Spiotta Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9780743273008
Availability: Not in Stock. Available to Order.
Published: Scribner - November 28th, 2006