Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta is published by Picador.
Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta is published by Picador.
Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta is published by Picador.
Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta is published by Picador.

Book review: Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others – LA women in friendship and rivalry


  • English
  • Arabic

The American novelist Dana Spiotta is among the great chroniclers of the nature of modern friendship.

Her debut work of fiction, Lightning Field (2001), examined the fraught amity of the relationship between an ambitious restaurateur and her friend and employee. Her second, Eat the Document (2006), considered how the bonds of comradeship are experienced by a pair of fugitive radicals in the age of the Vietnam War. And her third, Stone Arabia (2011), addressed the complex forms of attachment and resentment that can develop in the friendship of siblings, where one – the brother – is an aspirant and dishonest (and unsuccessful) musician and artist, and the other a single mother whose purpose is to serve as an audience for her brother's creative endeavours.

Innocents and Others, Spiotta's latest novel, returns to these themes. It tells the story of two filmmakers, Meadow Mori and Carrie Wexler, who grew up together in Los Angeles, and whose divergent professional preoccupations constitute one of the many forces that will come to test their relationship. Meadow makes documentaries that could be seen as exploiting and endangering her subjects: her first film, which attracts a great deal of attention, shows her inebriated 17-year-old boyfriend talking to the camera and alluding to a crime that might well threaten his liberty.

Carrie makes commercially-successful feature films that carry a feminist message. She earns Golden Globe nominations and wins a Writers’ Guild award. And Meadow resents her for it.

This atmosphere of strained loyalty and compromised admiration is lent additional turbulence by way of the figure of Jelly (who sometimes refers to herself as Nicole, and whose real name is Amy).

Jelly is a lonely and vulnerable woman who is addicted to phoning figures – screenwriters, set designers – on the periphery of Hollywood filmmaking. As she does so, she seduces them with her immense capacity for listening and for empathy, becomes their disembodied friend and unveils a form of connection more powerful than anything offered by the sensory distractions of face-to-face encounters: “The phone was built for this. It had no visual component, no tactile component ... Just vibrations ... and to clutch at them with your own thoughts was just wrong. A distinct resistance to potential. A lack of love, really. Because what is love, if not listening, as uninflected – as uncontained – as possible.”

In the course of making these calls, Jelly happens upon Jack, a divorced father and film composer who eventually tells Jelly he loves her and buys her a ticket to visit him in Los Angeles. Only Jelly, having lied about her age and appearance (she is not the young and attractive woman she has pretended to be, but overweight, unhappy and middle-aged), cannot bring herself to make the trip. So she stands him up and hangs up her phone for good, and subsequently becomes the subject of one of Meadow’s documentaries.

When the film debuts, it leads to further misery, humiliation and moral uncertainty. Jelly feels distressed, exposed, used. Meadow comes to question the ethics of her art, worries about the probity of documenting the misery of strangers and frets about the nature of her creation.

She worries that it is “too contrived, too forced, too cheesily consequential”, and similar anxieties surface in the minds of each of Spiotta’s characters as they reflect on how best to live in an age that is fragmented, mediated and transfigured by a world of technological innovation, disfigured by the demands of late capitalism.

Spiotta handles these stories with subtlety, precision and inventiveness. The book shifts between third- and first-person narratives; features sudden shifts in time and perspective; and is composed of an array of narrative forms – essays, blog posts, film reviews, transcripts – that are as various and disorienting as the many technological and artistic phenomena that populate her book.

That Spiotta is able to do this while sacrificing none of the pleasures of conventional storytelling is testament to the attentiveness of her prose, which modulates elegantly from one register to another without ever losing a unifying spirit; which is at once sharp, restrained, resonant, warm. It is also full of arresting intelligence, tender and memorable insights, and a determination to notice the wonder of the apparently negligible detail.

In order to capture the “magic” of art, it is said in this remarkable book, you must “look closely at the familiar to discover what everyone else overlooks or ignores or discards”.

Spiotta has looked more closely than most. And written a book that makes the world feel new.

Matthew Adams is a regular contributor to The Review.

Labour dispute

The insured employee may still file an ILOE claim even if a labour dispute is ongoing post termination, but the insurer may suspend or reject payment, until the courts resolve the dispute, especially if the reason for termination is contested. The outcome of the labour court proceedings can directly affect eligibility.


- Abdullah Ishnaneh, Partner, BSA Law 

Some of Darwish's last words

"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008

His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.

Sri Lanka v England

First Test, at Galle
England won by 211

Second Test, at Kandy
England won by 57 runs

Third Test, at Colombo
From Nov 23-27

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How%20to%20avoid%20getting%20scammed
%3Cul%3E%0A%3Cli%3ENever%20click%20on%20links%20provided%20via%20app%20or%20SMS%2C%20even%20if%20they%20seem%20to%20come%20from%20authorised%20senders%20at%20first%20glance%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EAlways%20double-check%20the%20authenticity%20of%20websites%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EEnable%20Two-Factor%20Authentication%20(2FA)%20for%20all%20your%20working%20and%20personal%20services%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EOnly%20use%20official%20links%20published%20by%20the%20respective%20entity%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EDouble-check%20the%20web%20addresses%20to%20reduce%20exposure%20to%20fake%20sites%20created%20with%20domain%20names%20containing%20spelling%20errors%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3C%2Ful%3E%0A
MATCH INFO

Euro 2020 qualifier

Ukraine 2 (Yaremchuk 06', Yarmolenko 27')

Portugal 1 (Ronaldo 72' pen)

Defence review at a glance

• Increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 but given “turbulent times it may be necessary to go faster”

• Prioritise a shift towards working with AI and autonomous systems

• Invest in the resilience of military space systems.

• Number of active reserves should be increased by 20%

• More F-35 fighter jets required in the next decade

• New “hybrid Navy” with AUKUS submarines and autonomous vessels

The%20Boy%20and%20the%20Heron
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%C2%A0%3C%2Fstrong%3EHayao%20Miyazaki%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%C2%A0Soma%20Santoki%2C%20Masaki%20Suda%2C%20Ko%20Shibasaki%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E5%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The finalists

Player of the Century, 2001-2020: Cristiano Ronaldo (Juventus), Lionel Messi (Barcelona), Mohamed Salah (Liverpool), Ronaldinho

Coach of the Century, 2001-2020: Pep Guardiola (Manchester City), Jose Mourinho (Tottenham Hotspur), Zinedine Zidane (Real Madrid), Sir Alex Ferguson

Club of the Century, 2001-2020: Al Ahly (Egypt), Bayern Munich (Germany), Barcelona (Spain), Real Madrid (Spain)

Player of the Year: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)

Club of the Year: Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Real Madrid

Coach of the Year: Gian Piero Gasperini (Atalanta), Hans-Dieter Flick (Bayern Munich), Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)

Agent of the Century, 2001-2020: Giovanni Branchini, Jorge Mendes, Mino Raiola

LILO & STITCH

Starring: Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Rating: 4.5/5

UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
How to register as a donor

1) Organ donors can register on the Hayat app, run by the Ministry of Health and Prevention

2) There are about 11,000 patients in the country in need of organ transplants

3) People must be over 21. Emiratis and residents can register. 

4) The campaign uses the hashtag  #donate_hope

While you're here
From Zero

Artist: Linkin Park

Label: Warner Records

Number of tracks: 11

Rating: 4/5

Top%2010%20most%20competitive%20economies
%3Cp%3E1.%20Singapore%0D%3Cbr%3E2.%20Switzerland%0D%3Cbr%3E3.%20Denmark%0D%3Cbr%3E4.%20Ireland%0D%3Cbr%3E5.%20Hong%20Kong%0D%3Cbr%3E6.%20Sweden%0D%3Cbr%3E7.%20UAE%0D%3Cbr%3E8.%20Taiwan%0D%3Cbr%3E9.%20Netherlands%0D%3Cbr%3E10.%20Norway%0D%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A

Titan Sports Academy:

Programmes: Judo, wrestling, kick-boxing, muay thai, taekwondo and various summer camps

Location: Inside Abu Dhabi City Golf Club, Al Mushrif, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Telephone:  971 50 220 0326

 

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COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EYango%20Deli%20Tech%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EUAE%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ELaunch%20year%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2022%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ERetail%20SaaS%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFunding%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESelf%20funded%0D%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A