The Los Angeles Dana Spiotta evokes in her bold and
strangely lyrical first novel is a land of Spirit Gyms
and Miracle Miles, a great centerless place where chains
of reference get lost, or finally don't matter. Mina
lives with her screenwriter husband and works at her
best friend Lorene's highly successful concept
restaurants, which exploit the often unconscious desires
and idiosyncrasies of a rich, chic clientele. Almost
inadvertently, Mina has acquired two lovers. And then
there are the other men in her life: her father, a
washed-up Hollywood director living in a yurt and hiding
from his debtors, and her disturbed brother, Michael,
whose attempts to connect with her force Mina to
consider that she might still have a heart - if only she
could remember where she had left it. Between her
Spiritual Exfoliation and Detoxification therapies and
her elaborate devotion to style, Lorene is interested
only in charting her own perfection and impending decay.
Although supremely confident in a million shallow ways,
she, too, starts to fray at the edges. And there is
Lisa, a loving mother who cleans houses, scrapes by, and
dreams of food terrorists and child abductors, until
even the most innocent events seem to hint at dark
possibilities. Lightning Field explores the language
tics of our culture - the consumerist fetishes, the
self-obsession and the &Thorn;eeting possibility
that you just might have gotten it all badly wrong. In
funny, cutting, unsentimental prose, Spiotta exposes the
contradictions of contemporary lives in which "identity
is a collection of references." She writes about
overcoming not just despair but ambivalence. Playful and
dire, raw and poetic, Lightning Field introduces a
startling new voice in American fiction.
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