Innocents and Others

December 14, 2015
Spiotta (Stone Arabia) tackles the slippery nature of identity and the destructive pull of desire in her fourth novel—this time through the lens of film. Having lived in Los Angeles since the 1980s, best friends Meadow and Carrie are both successful filmmakers, but their approach to art and life couldn’t be more different. Married and strapped with a family, Carrie’s films are breezy crowd-pleasers, while solo Meadow’s searing documentaries pick at the scabs of their subjects’ shortcomings. One of Meadow’s early films tracks an outcast boy’s disastrous experimentation with sex. Another of her “heavy, invisible, unremarkable” subjects is 41-year-old Jelly, aka Nicole—whose sad but captivating backstory Spiotta explores over the course of sporadic chapters—seduces Hollywood men over the phone but self-consciously vanishes when they ask to meet in person. As the book progresses, both women’s lives spiral downward—Carrie’s home life is hollow, Meadow’s self-destructive narcissism ends her career—leaving neither fulfilled. 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.

January 1, 2016

Raised in Los Angeles and best friends since eighth grade, Meadow and Carrie are inspired by their film teacher to pursue directing careers after their 1985 high school graduation. Whippet-thin Meadow obsesses over lost film footage and a desire to decode the secrets of the great filmmakers, particularly Orson Welles. Intelligent, talented, moneyed, and more than a little pretentious, she creates her own brand of critically successful documentary films showcasing "raw human drama." A softer, kinder Carrie, tutored by Meadow in classic cinema but raised on formulaic TV sitcoms, finds commercial success as a director of popular multiplex comedies. Meanwhile, dumpy, visually challenged Jelly, a middle-aged lover of movies, insinuates herself into the world of those who create it. She is first introduced to anonymous calling by her boyfriend, a 1970s "phone phreaker" who hacks the landline system, and through luck and canny research eventually becomes "Nicole," phone-only confidante and love interest of Jack, a renowned film composer. Through these characters, Spiotta (Stone Arabia) reveals that like cinema itself, all relationships depend upon a measure of illusion. VERDICT Spiotta does a masterly job of getting under the skin of disparate characters, revealing the kinds of insecurities that plague us all, successful or not. [See Prepub Alert, 9/14/15.]--Paula Gallagher, Baltimore Cty. P.L.

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