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Stone Arabia. Dana Spiotta (2011)

by Dana Spiotta(Favorite Author)

3.33 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0857863738 (ISBN13: 9780857863737)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Canongate Books

review 1: Plunk. This book fell through my hands like a rock, but I kept trying to enjoy it, anyway. There was so much promise here: the narrator's fascinating, secluded, imaginary rock star of a brother, her preoccupations with aging and death, an onslaught of cable news infiltrating her coping abilities. But it held me at arm's length, anyway.I could have, and almost did, put this down after 50 pages, but I soldiered on, convinced I needed to stick with it because of its appearance on some Flavorwire list of 50 Best Books by Women Under 50. Oh, well. Spiotta's writing is brilliant at moments, but I kept trying to compare her to other contemporary writers I enjoy more. (How would Egan, Chabon, Eugenides have handled this?)
review 2: Roughly, the story is told by a siste... morer about a brother who is one of those "lost" cult rock artists. In this case, her brother has not only been recording in obscurity, but he has created a personal mythology around his works, with his own archive of fake bands, fake reviews, fake interviews. It is very plausible, for good reason: Spiotta got the idea of the story from the creative (non-)career of her stepfather. It's good stuff. I enjoyed reading it.Dana Spiotta is a great writer of words, but I'm afraid this has some writerly tricks to create closure where there isn't much.So, without doing spoilers: A classic writer's trick to create a sense of closure / finish / "ending"by shifting the narrative in some way at the end. Spiotta does it twice. Toward the end she has her narrator revisit a relatively minor incident; and then at the end there's a time-shift. These are supposed to provide some "ahas" for the reader, or at least puzzles -- but I don't think she pulls it off.I think the thematic continuities between the bulk of the story and the ending(s) are pretty weak, and that in some sense this novel is a bit of a placeholder in a distinguished career.Having said that:If you're interested in any of the following: the history of rock and its cult heroes; the 1970s and 80s; California; family relationships; menopause . . . read it. less

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