Innocents and Others

(Paperback)

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Description

Meadow Mori and Carrie Wexler grew up together in Los Angeles, and both became filmmakers. Meadow makes documentaries; 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. Older, erotic, and mysterious, Jelly cold calls powerful men and seduces them, not through sex but through listening. Her downfall, and what makes her so extraordinarily moving, is that she pretends to be someone she is not. PRAISE FOR INNOCENTS AND OTHERS "A daring and beautiful meditation about selfishness and selflessness, and how to be in the world." George Saunders, author of Tenth of December "A thrillingly complex and emotionally astute novel about fame, power, and alienation steeped in a dark eroticism and a particularly American kind of loneliness" Vanity Fair "The complex relationship among three women and the film world drives this tale of technology and its discontents... A superb, spiky exploration of artistic motivation" Kirkus "Masterful, a novel as elegant and audacious as it is absorbing and complex. For the closer we move to the truth of her characters and their dilemmas, the clearer it becomes that truth is both immense and provisional, the understandings it offers startling and elusive." The Australian

Reviews

A wonderfully gifted writer with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadnesses of contemporary life -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times *
A thrillingly complex and emotionally astute novel about fame, power, and alienation steeped in a dark eroticism and a particularly American kind of loneliness * Vanity Fair *
A literary marvel . . . As Don DeLillo did for rock and roll with Great Jones St., so Spiotta does for film. . .Her aim is nothing less than redemption, and she delivers -- Mary Karr, author of The Liars Club
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. . . brilliant, and erotic, and pop -- Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers
A fine novel. . . flawless and epic -- Joshua Ferris, author of To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
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
The brilliant Dana Spiotta had me from page one --a lithely intelligent, moving inquiry into the mysterious compositions of art and friendships -- Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

Author Bio

Dana Spiotta is the author of Stone Arabia, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Eat the Document, a finalist for the National Book Award; and Lightning Field. Spiotta received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the Rome Prize for Literature. Her work has been published by the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and the New York Times Book Review. She teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.