Innocents and Others (Spiotta) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Ambitious.... Innocents and Others aims not only to use its characters’ experiences to open a window on American life in the late 20th century, but also to examine how technology has atomized contemporary life and the ways art mediates our relationships with friends and strangers. ...[S]harp, kinetic.... Ms. Spiotta writes about film with great knowledge and insight.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


Such is the subtlety of Spiotta’s prose, and the diversity of its presentation (the book includes biographical essays, video transcripts, diary entries, online chats), that the reader can never be sure which, if any, meaning is intended as primary. Are we meant to discern a deconstructive critique, or merely a mockery of chick lit, in Spiotta’s portrayal of two smart female artists trying to honor their pasts while inventing their futures, all without judging each other to death? Or are we reading a philosophical novel, one that enacts the immemorial debate between art as entertainment (Carrie’s filmography) and art for art’s sake (Meadow’s)?
Joshua Cohen - New York Times Book Review


A brilliant split-screen view of women working within and without the world of Hollywood…. [I]lluminating….. Among chapters of conventional narration, Spiotta presents the transcript of an eight-hour interview...lists, descriptions of editing sessions, a filmography, online essays. Whatever the novel needs, it confidently shifts to embrace…its moral dimensions feel vast. Once Spiotta has her disparate storylines in motion, they resonate with each other in ways you can’t stop thinking about…. Spiotta explores the remarkable species of sisterhood that survives jealousy and disappointment and even years of neglect....nothing can blot out their shared history, their abiding devotion, the great wonder that is a true friend.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


Enigmatic… fascinating… the need to connect, the desire for intimacy and friendship, and the quest for meaning in our lives are at the heart of this complex and compelling book… Spiotta is asking big, interesting, questions here. Without consciousness, without an inward operator, what are we connecting to? To art? To nature? To something divine?.... It is worth mentioning that in the structure of the novel, Spiotta is playing with time and narrative, jumping freely between story lines, to create a unique vibe that buzzes in your subconscious…. These dual (or triple) parallel threads intersect only briefly but with consequences that deliver a surprising wallop of emotion…. It's difficult not to descend into hyperbole talking about Spiotta's work. 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…. 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.
Mark Haskell Smith - Los Angeles Times


Haunting…[Meadow’s] story serves as the intellectual fulcrum of this intimate, unsettling novel, but Jelly provides its emotional heart.
Claudia Rowe - Seattle Times


A female critic may have been impolitic in calling Spiotta "DeLillo with a vagina"; more to the point, she’s DeLillo with a heart (or a stronger one, at least). Innocents and Others is both lean and capacious. Revolving around a documentary filmmaker, her rocky friendship with a more commercial director, and one of her subjects—a sympathetic con artist who catfishes powerful men over the phone—Innocents and Others uses both traditional narration and ‘found’ documents to build a sort of mixed-media meditation on alienation, friendship, technology, and the senses of hearing and sight.
Boris Kachka - New York Magazine


A thrillingly complex and emotionally astute novel about fame, power, and alienation steeped in a dark eroticism and a particularly American kind of loneliness.
Elissa Schappell - Vanity Fair


The visionary liberty and daring with which Dana Spiotta has crafted her brilliant new novel Innocents and Others is both inspirational and infectious. At its heart is a cinematic tale of friendship, obsession, morality, and creativity between best-friend filmmakers Carrie Wexler and Meadow Mori….over time, Meadow’s ‘penchant for failures, [her] soft spot for them’ and Carrie’s commercial success will test their bond to the max…original and seductive…with Innocents and Others, [Spiotta] delivers a tale about female friendship, the limits of love and work, and costs of claiming your right to celebrate your triumphs and own your mistakes.
Lisa Shea - Elle


Impossible to put down.
Steph Optiz - Marie Claire


Dana Spiotta’s whip-smart Innocents and Others maps the unexpected confluence of two rising feminist filmmakers and a movie buff who, posing as a film student, seduces Hollywood men over the phone, simply by listening to them.
Marnie Hanel - W


Brilliant…masterful…Recalling a younger, warmer DeLillo, Spiotta reminds us that the cinema is where America fears and desires have long been projected, the small-town theater an abandoned temple of shared dreams. At the same time, she nails a devastating irony: The more reachable we are, the more screens infiltrate our lives, the less there is that genuinely connects us.
Megan O’Grady - Vogue


Eschewing linear storytelling in favor of chapters interspersed with scene and interview transcripts and paragraphs of film theory, Spiotta delivers a patchwork portrait of two women on the verge of two very different nervous breakdowns. True to form, the effect is like watching raw footage before it’s been edited—sometimes moving, often disjointed, always thought provoking.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [E]nsnaring, sly, and fiercely intelligent.... 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.) The complex relationship among three women and the film world drives this tale of technology and its discontents.... [Spiotta] finds something miraculous in how technology can reveal us to ourselves.... A superb, spiky exploration of artistic motivation.
Kirkus Reviews