Stone Arabia

Dana Spiotta's new novel is uneven. And in her performance of it, Elisabeth Rodgers has a strange way of humming final consonants of key words, almost to the point of adding ghost syllables after those that won't sing. It's distracting, but her voice is otherwise lovely, and she performs with admirable attention and skill, smoothly distinguishing the characters' sexes, ages, and emotional states. The core of the story is a sister's love for and frustration with her brilliant musician brother, who is gifted but solipsistic to the point of mental illness. Nik is a compelling creation, original and touching, though other parts of Denise's life are less convincing, particularly her obsession with victims she follows on cable news channels, which seems like a padding device standing in for personality. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 4, 2011
Spiotta's extraordinary new novel is an inspired consideration of sibling devotion, Southern California, and fame. Nik Worth is a reclusive musician in his late 40s at the tail end of his "blasé and phlegmatic glamour," who once almost made it big. But as he careens toward 50, he begins to retreat into a private world, living in his tiny "hermitage" apartment, recording a multivolume series called the Ontology of Worth, and assembling the Chronicles, a scrapbooked alternate history of his career, complete with fake news clippings, doctored photographs, and reviews. Nik's primary links to the world, and biggest fans, are his devoted younger sister, Denise, and to a lesser extent, her daughter, Ada. But when Ada begins a documentary probing her uncle's "whole constructed lifeology thingy" just as the inner logic of Nik's "chronicled" life unspools, Nik and Denise are plunged into a crisis. With her novel's clever structure, jaundiced affection for Los Angeles, and diamond-honed prose, Spiotta (National Book Award finalist for Eat the Document) delivers one of the most moving and original portraits of a sibling relationship in recent fiction.