Innocents and Others

An extraordinary new novel about friendship, seduction and art. Winner of the 2017 SFC Literary Prize. `A perfect mix of addictively weird characters, slightly skewed history and art within art . . . Innocents and Others will have you forgetting that the bath has grown cold as you read long into the night.’ Lena Dunham, Lenny Letter Meadow makes challenging documentaries; Carrie makes successful feature films with a feminist slant. Their loyalty trumps their different approaches to film and to life. Until, one day, a mysterious woman with a unique ability to enthral men over the phone becomes the subject of one of Meadow’s documentaries, and throws everything into jeopardy. `A thrillingly complex and emotionally astute novel about fame, power, and alienation steeped in a dark eroticism and a particularly American kind of loneliness’ Vanity Fair ‘Spiotta is a wonder.’ – George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the BardoMeadow Mori and Carrie Wexler grew up together in Los Angeles, and both became film-makers. 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. The fallout from this challenges their friendship like nothing before.Heart-breaking and insightful, Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta is an astonishing novel about friendship, identity, loneliness and art.