Innocents and Others

Staff Top Fives 2016

Our favorite books of the year.

Dana Spiotta is one of those writers who inspires intense devotion in readers. Once I had read one book by her, I eagerly sought out everything else she had ever written. Her newest novel, Innocents and Others, tells the interlocking stories of a documentary filmmaker, a director of mainstream "chick flicks," and a blind woman who spends her days calling random people on the telephone. It builds upon many of the themes established in her previous work — the lingering significance of the '60s and '70s in American culture, the fluid nature of identity, the inner worlds of women, and the influence of art and technology on individual lives — while also marking a newfound experimentation with form. Recommended By Marlena W., Powells.com

From Dana Spiotta, the author of Eat the Document and Stone Arabia, "A brilliant novel…about female friendship, the limits of love and work, and costs of claiming your right to celebrate your triumphs and own your mistakes" (Elle).

Innocents and Others is about two women who grow up in LA in the 80s and become filmmakers. Meadow and Carrie have everything in common — except their views on sex, power, movie-making, and morality. Their friendship is complicated, but their devotion to each other trumps their wildly different approaches to film and to life. Meadow was always the more idealistic and brainy of the two; Carrie was more pragmatic. Into their lives comes Jelly, a master of seduction who calls powerful men and seduces them not with sex, but by being a superior listener. 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.

A startlingly acute observer of the way we live now, Dana Spiotta "has created a new kind of great American novel" (The New York Times Magazine). "Impossible to put down" (Marie Claire), Innocents and Others is "a sexy, painfully insightful, and strangely redemptive novel about the ways we misread one another — with an ending that comes at you like a truck around a blind curve and stays with you for much, much longer" (Esquire).

"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… 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

"A brilliant, riddling clip-montage of the friendship between two very different filmmakers… Spiotta’s dramatization of the Meadow-Carrie dyad is masterly, with lines that seem delivered—improvised—by women who’ve known each other and even the reader forever... Highbrow and lowbrow have cohabitated before, of course, but rarely with this ease or this empathy." Joshua Cohen, The New York Times Book Review

"A brilliant split-screen view of women working within and without the world of Hollywood… illuminating… 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…The story’s real heart, though, is the tenacious relationship between Meadow and Carrie, the serious documentarian and the Hollywood hitmaker. Working in the tight space of this relatively slim novel, Spiotta explores the remarkable species of sisterhood that survives jealousy and disappointment and even years of neglect. The tension between artistic purity and commercial popularity may tax their affection, but nothing can blot out their shared history, their abiding devotion, the great wonder that is a true friend. Toward the end, Meadow considers how to create a 'glimpse of the sublime.' Considering the limits of her medium, she asks herself, 'Can an image convey something unnameable, impossible, invisible?' The quiet miracle of this novel is that it does just that." Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"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…original and seductive…with Innocents and Others, [Spiotta] delivers a tale about female friendship, and the limits of love and work, and costs of claiming your right to celebrate your triumphs and own your mistakes." Lisa Shea, Elle

"Wondrous and mysterious... Brilliant, and erotic, and pop." Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers and Telex from Cuba

"A daring and beautiful meditation about selfishness and selflessness, and how to be in the world. A powerful book that will stay with me." George Saunders, author of Tenth of December

Dana Spiotta is the author of Innocents and Others; 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.

My novel Innocents and Others is a book about artists, about making and engaging with art. Two filmmakers (Meadow and Carrie) are main characters. In the coming-of-age part of the book, we see them growing up and developing their artistic sensibilities...

Read More»