Dana Spiotta

A "furious and addictive new novel" (The New York Times) about mothers and daughters, and one woman's midlife reckoning as she flees her suburban life, from the renowned author of Stone Arabia and Eat the Document "An urgent, deeply moving, wholly original novel by one of the most wildly talented writers in America. --George Saunders On the heels of the election of 2016, Samantha Raymond's life begins to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and at fifty-two she finds herself staring into the Mids--that hour of supreme wakefulness between three and four in the morning in which women of a certain age suddenly find themselves contemplating motherhood, mortality, and, in this case, the state of our unraveling nation. When she falls in love with a beautiful, decrepit house in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Syracuse, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life--and her family--as she grapples with how to be a wife, a mother, and a daughter, in a country that is coming apart at the seams. Dana Spiotta's Wayward is a stunning novel about aging, about the female body, and about female difficulty--female complexity--in the age of Trump. Probing and provocative, brainy and sensual, it is a testament to our weird, off-kilter America, to reforms and resistance and utopian wishes, and to the beauty of ruins. Tremendous new work from one of the most gifted writers of her generation.

Wayward

"From the strikingly original National Book Award nominee, a riveting novel set in Los Angeles and New York that focuses on three women--how they define themselves, how they create meaningful work, how they love"--

A Novel

Innocents and Others

Idealistic activists Bobby and Mary find the course of their lives irrevocably changed when a series of radical protests against the Vietnam War goes wrong, a situation that forces them to separate and culminates years later in painful memories.

Eat the Document

Sharing a close bond that supersedes other relationships, Nic, a fiercely reclusive musician; and Denise, his dedicated sister and solitary audience member, become increasingly isolated in the wake of Nic's obsessive work, a situation that grows vulnerable as the siblings age. By the National Book Award-nominated author of Eat the Document.

Stone Arabia

Roman

Unberechenbar

Lightning Field

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR * A "furious and addictive new novel" (The New York Times) about mothers and daughters, and one woman's midlife reckoning as she flees her suburban life. "Exhilarating ... reads like a burning fever dream. A virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad." --The New York Times Book Review Samantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and at fifty-two she finds herself staring into "the Mids"--that hour of supreme wakefulness between three and four in the morning in which women of a certain age suddenly find themselves contemplating motherhood, mortality, and, in this case, the state of our unraveling nation. When she falls in love with a beautiful, decrepit house in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Syracuse, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life--and her family--as she grapples with how to be a wife, a mother, and a daughter, in a country that is coming apart at the seams. Dana Spiotta's Wayward is a stunning novel about aging, about the female body, and about female complexity in contemporary America. Probing and provocative, brainy and sensual, it is a testament to our weird times, to reforms and resistance and utopian wishes, and to the beauty of ruins.

The Los Angeles Dana Spiotta evokes in her bold and strangely lyrical first novel is a land of Spirit Gyms and Miracle Miles, a great centerless place where chains of reference get lost, or finally don't matter. Mina lives with her screenwriter husband and works at her best friend Lorene's highly successful concept restaurants, which exploit the often unconscious desires and idiosyncrasies of a rich, chic clientele. Almost inadvertently, Mina has acquired two lovers. And then there are the other men in her life: her father, a washed-up Hollywood director living in a yurt and hiding from his debtors, and her disturbed brother, Michael, whose attempts to connect with her force Mina to consider that she might still have a heart -- if only she could remember where she had left it. Between her Spiritual Exfoliation and Detoxification therapies and her elaborate devotion to style, Lorene is interested only in charting her own perfection and impending decay. Although supremely confident in a million shallow ways, she, too, starts to fray at the edges. And there is Lisa, a loving mother who cleans houses, scrapes by, and dreams of food terrorists and child abductors, until even the most innocent events seem to hint at dark possibilities. Lightning Field explores the language tics of our culture -- the consumerist fetishes, the self-obsession and the þeeting possibility that you just might have gotten it all badly wrong. In funny, cutting, unsentimental prose, Spiotta exposes the contradictions of contemporary lives in which "identity is a collection of references." She writes about overcoming not just despair but ambivalence. Playful and dire, raw and poetic, Lightning Field introduces a startling new voice in American fiction.

Dana Spiotta

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