This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

Meadow and Carrie are best friends, growing up in Los Angeles. It's not a friendship most would have predicted. Meadow is thin, mysterious, the ultimate cool girl while Carrie is chubby and still looking to find herself. They meet at school in a film class and become fast friends, making movies and finding their life's work. They both get into a prestigious Eastern film university and Carrie stays and graduates from there. Her work is mainstream and soon she is a successful filmmaker with awards from the industry and a marriage and children. Meadow goes a different route, making indie films that are praised but not commercial successes, films that ask questions or just highlight a topic that Meadow finds interesting. She moves too fast and at her own whims, going where her latest interest takes her. She is moving too fast to accumulate things like a family or a home.

Jelly is a mystery. She was blind once for months as the result of an illness. She met people at the school for the blind she attended that introduced her to phone phreaking. From that, Jelly came up with what sustains her life. She calls men, rich successful men and seduces them, not with sex but with listening. Soon these men stop whatever they are doing to talk with Jelly for hours, telling her things they never share with anyone else. Jelly's life collides with Meadow's, when Meadow hears about her and talks Jelly into being the topic of her latest documentary. The film and its consequences changes everyone's lives.

Dana Spiotta is one of those authors whom other authors respect. Her works have included Stone Arabia, Eat The Document and Lightning Field. These works have been finalists for awards such as the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her work highlights the absurdity of modern life and the yearning for connection with others that most people have. This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.

Unfortunately, I was not able to download this title once I was approved and before it was archived. I therefore cannot provide a review at this time.

I don't even know where to start with describing this novel - the publisher's blurb describes it as about two best friends since middle school who both go on to become filmmakers (one of documentaries and one of popular movies)- which is true, but makes this book sound much more conventional than it is. Plus there is a third main character whose connection to the story does not become clear until much later in the book. I had a really hard time getting into this one -found it slow and disjointed at first, plus it seems like it is trying to be more a novel of ideas than of lifelike characters. Somewhere around 2/3 in, it finally clicked for me and I started really getting into it - only for it then to end somewhat abruptly and not satisfyingly. Averaging all of that out, I guess I would give it 3 stars.

The story of two best friends growing up in the eighties… Well, obviously I was going to read Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others.

Meadow and Carrie meet in high school and although their opinions differ on many things, they bond over movies and become best friends. Both pursue a career in movie-making (it’s LA in the 80s so everyone’s in the business, right?) although take different paths. Meadow makes gritty documentaries while Carrie finds success through lighter films with broader appeal.

There’s a third key character in this story – Jelly, a woman who has formed hundreds of relationships with men over the phone. She cold calls powerful men and seduces them not through sex but through listening.

It’s a novel written in ‘mixed media’ – interviews, catalogues, scripts, first person narration and commentary are used to tell the stories of the three women. Plot twists aren’t always spelled out but rather skirted around, and deduced from jumps in time. In one section Meadow makes a comment which I suspect is Spiotta, speaking as herself –

“I have always been attracted to afterlives, codas, postscripts, discursive asides, and especially misdirection.”

The problem with the piecemeal approach is that some bits are invariably better and more appealing than others. The opening chapter, when Meadow begins an affair with an unnamed but powerful Hollywood director is brilliant –

“Understand, I was no groupie, no seeker of famous men. He seemed to me, for whatever reason, a chagrined innocent, a man I could trust. So I kissed him, then pulled back and waited for it to change my life.”

Sections where Carrie and Meadow dissect ‘historic’ movies flagged but broader references to movies in the context of popular culture were interesting –

“…what Meadow once told me about being an artist. It is partly a confidence game. And partly magic. But to make something you also need to be a gleaner. What is a gleaner? Well, it is a nice word for thief, except you take what no one wants. Not just unusual ideas or things. You look closely at the familiar to discover what everyone else overlooks or ignores or discards.”

Movie buffs can find the list of films Spiotta used (and why) here.

3/5 I wasn’t engrossed but yes, a clever book.

I received my copy of Innocents and Others from the publisher, Scribner, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.