Stone Arabia - by Dana Spiotta (Paperback)

About the Book

From a National Book Award nominee comes "a smart, subtle, moving story about the complicated business of knowing the people you love" "(Book Forum"). Denise remains her brother Nik's most passionate audience, but when her daughter decides to make a film about Nik, everyone's vulnerabilities escalate.

Book Synopsis

From the National Book Award nominated author of Innocents and Others and Wayward, "a smart, subtle, moving story about the complicated business of knowing the people you love" (Book Forum). In the sibling relationship, "there are no first impressions, no seductions, no getting to know each other," says Denise Kranis. For Denise and her brother, Nik, now in their forties, no relationship is more significant. They grew up in Los Angeles in the late seventies and early eighties. Nik was always the artist, always wrote music, always had a band. Now he makes his art in private, obsessively documenting the work but never testing it in the world. Denise remains Nik's most passionate and acute audience; she is also the crucial support for Nik and for their aging mother, whose dementia seems to threaten her own memory. When Denise's daughter, Ada, decides to make a film about Nik, everyone's vulnerabilities escalate. In Stone Arabia, Dana Spiotta "explores the inner workings of celebrity, family, and other modern-day mythologies" (Vogue).

Review Quotes

"Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia is a dreamlike meditation on fame and success, technology and the imagination. The novel beautifully manifests Ms. Spiotta's gift for transforming her keen cultural intelligence into haunting, evocative prose."-Jennifer Egan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad

About the Author

Dana Spiotta is the author of six novels. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, the St. Francis College Literary Prize, and the John Updike Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novels have been shortlisted for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She teaches in the Syracuse University creative writing program.