Shianna Whitner<\/p>\n
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Dana Spiotta\u2019s novel Innocents and Others<\/em> captures an artist\u2019s journey, the deterioration of friendship, and the misconduct of the lonely.\u00a0 The three main characters are all so different yet Spiotta weaves their stories together wonderfully.<\/p>\n The book follows the lives of Meadow Mori, a rich artsy Los Angeles native, her lifelong best friend Carrie Wexler, and a woman named Jelly who uses her listening skills to get well-to-do men to fall in love with her over the phone.\u00a0 The story traces their lives from the present, back to the 70\u2019s and up to the present again.\u00a0 It shows how Meadow and Carrie forged their friendship and their careers, and how the latter led them in different directions, though they held on to threads of what remained.\u00a0 It also traces the path that led Jelly to a life of lies and seduction.<\/p>\n Meadow is an immersive type of artist who dives into her work, one project at a time and does not surface until she is either satisfied or ready to discard.\u00a0 She goes from filming her best friend to filming trains to filming her new boyfriend.\u00a0 It is this final thing that changes her as an artist.\u00a0 In this moment she pushes someone close to her in order to improve her art.\u00a0 This becomes a defining moment in Meadow\u2019s life and raises the question:\u00a0 How far must one go for their art?<\/p>\n Carrie is the social one.\u00a0 She cares more about making people laugh and forming emotional bonds than about accolades and bigger messages.\u00a0 Carrie marries and starts a family while maintaining her career as a screenwriter for female-led comedies.\u00a0 While Meadow is focused solely on her career, Carrie tries to salvage what remains of their friendship.<\/p>\n Jelly on the other hand never had the friendship that Meadow and Carrie shared.\u00a0 She has only had relationships with men that ended.\u00a0 However, one very important relationship with a man named Oz, led her to phone phreaking.\u00a0 This ability to manipulate tones and connect to people across the world led Jelly to forming her own phone identity and using it to build connections with men in Hollywood.<\/p>\n All three of these women have experienced their own highs and lows on their journeys, whether their search was for art, family, or love.\u00a0 I enjoyed the depth of character that Spiotta explored with these three women.\u00a0 She allows Meadow to explore the darkness within herself in a way that called everything she had ever done into question.\u00a0 This sort of self examination is risky business, but in this case it was done so in a way that was evocative and emotional.\u00a0 As for Carrie, she has to fight to maintain her friendship with Meadow as it falls through the cracks, and Jelly has to face her actions after years of misleading men through the art of conversation.\u00a0 For these characters, the story lies in what they do to get what they want and in many cases the question is: Did they go too far?\u00a0 However, no matter the answer the story itself is a ride worth taking.\u00a0 Spiotta\u2019s characterization is exceptional.\u00a0 Her development of the three main characters makes the story a fast read as you turn the page and delve deeper into the lives of these intriguing women.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Innocents and Others<\/em><\/p>\n Dana Spiotta<\/p>\n Scribner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shianna Whitner Dana Spiotta\u2019s novel Innocents and Others captures an artist\u2019s journey, the deterioration of friendship, and the misconduct of the lonely.\u00a0 The three main characters are all so different yet Spiotta weaves their stories together wonderfully. The book follows the lives of Meadow Mori, a rich artsy Los Angeles native, her lifelong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-written-by"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":598,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}