Innocents and Others

'A wonderfully gifted writer with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadnesses of contemporary life' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 'The brilliant Dana Spiotta had me from page one . . . a lithely intelligent, moving inquiry into the mysterious compositions of art and friendships' Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins Meadow Mori and Carrie Wexler grew up together in Los Angeles, and both became filmmakers. Meadow makes challenging documentaries; Carrie makes successful feature films with a feminist slant. The two friends have everything in common - except their views on sex, power, movie-making and morality. And yet their loyalty trumps their different approaches to film and to life. Until, one day, a mysterious woman with a unique ability to cold-call and seduce powerful men over the phone - not through sex, but through listening - becomes the subject of one of Meadow's documentaries. Her downfall, and what makes her so extraordinarily moving, is that she pretends to be someone she is not. Heart-breaking and insightful, Innocents and Others is an astonishing novel about friendship, identity, loneliness and art. 'A wondrous and mysterious novel, a spectacular and subtle meditation on sight and sound . . . brilliant, and erotic, and pop' Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers

Dana Spiotta is the author of Stone Arabia, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Eat the Document, a finalist for the National Book Award; and Lightning Field. Spiotta received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellow­ship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the Rome Prize for Literature. Her work has been pub­lished by the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and the New York Times Book Review. She teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.