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Lightning Field: A Novel
The Los Angeles Dana Spiotta evokes in her 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 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 house, scrapes by, and dreams of food terrorists and child abductors, until even the most innocent events seem to hint at dark possibilities.
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 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 house, scrapes by, and dreams of food terrorists and child abductors, until even the most innocent events seem to hint at dark possibilities.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
15 people are currently reading
676 people want to read
About the author
Dana Spiotta
13 books483 followersScribner published Dana Spiotta’s first novel, Lightning Field, in 2001. The New York Times called it “the debut of a wonderfully gifted writer with an uncanny feel for the absurdities and sadnesses of contemporary life, and an unerring ear for how people talk and try to cope today.” It was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the West.
Her second novel, Eat the Document, was published in 2006 by Scribner. It was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michiko Kakutani wrote in her review in The New York Times that Eat The Document was “stunning” and described it as “a book that possesses the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel.”
Stone Arabia is the title of Spiotta’s third novel. Scribner will publish it on July 12, 2011.
Her second novel, Eat the Document, was published in 2006 by Scribner. It was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award and a recipient of the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michiko Kakutani wrote in her review in The New York Times that Eat The Document was “stunning” and described it as “a book that possesses the staccato ferocity of a Joan Didion essay and the razzle-dazzle language and the historical resonance of a Don DeLillo novel.”
Stone Arabia is the title of Spiotta’s third novel. Scribner will publish it on July 12, 2011.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
January 6, 2014
If a shotgun wielding redhead jammed a double barrel between my lips, told me to reach my hands toward the stars, spit a glob of chewing tobacco six inches from my left foot, and then asked me this dreaded question: What is the theme of LIGHTNING FIELD? I’d tell her I have no idea, shut my eyes tight, and hope her nicotine-induced haze didn’t include a trigger pull, as she offered up a bit of mercy on my soul.
What I can tell you, though, is infidelity and the fragility of the human spirit run rampant through this tale, faster than a mouse running through a maze with a shotgun three inches from his bum. And there’s a certain lack of cohesiveness many folks might find intriguing. I found it interesting but not overly so.
But emotional damage thundered through me of the constant variety with the blackened hearts of the blackened souls of these blackened and damaged characters, many of whom paid witness to the bleakness of human suffering. And I found myself rushing toward the end, in the hope that some of my sanity might return in full force, or I’d even settle for half-mast, as the fragility of the human spirit rested rather resolutely on the pending outcome.
Cross-posted at Robert's Reads
What I can tell you, though, is infidelity and the fragility of the human spirit run rampant through this tale, faster than a mouse running through a maze with a shotgun three inches from his bum. And there’s a certain lack of cohesiveness many folks might find intriguing. I found it interesting but not overly so.
But emotional damage thundered through me of the constant variety with the blackened hearts of the blackened souls of these blackened and damaged characters, many of whom paid witness to the bleakness of human suffering. And I found myself rushing toward the end, in the hope that some of my sanity might return in full force, or I’d even settle for half-mast, as the fragility of the human spirit rested rather resolutely on the pending outcome.
Cross-posted at Robert's Reads
November 7, 2015
How Superb is Thy Blurb!
Don DeLillo blurbed Dana Spiotta's debut:
"Los Angeles is the air we all breathe in this wonderfully funny, accomplished, and far-reaching first novel about our consumer colossus and the human products it makes and shapes."
And here's Bret Easton Ellis (whom Spiotta has in turn described as a "fascinating and sly writer"):
"A truly convincing L.A. novel: the scraped nerves, the free-floating dissatisfaction, the lingering scenes in chic, empty restaurants and hotel bars, the conversations with the tense inflections that don't reveal anything, the nowhere sex with wandering, absent lovers, a place where everything's a reference to a movie and the pull of wanting to be someone you're not is inescapable – and finally the half-hearted escape and the inevitable return. Dana Spiotta's focus and control and insight are remarkable; this raw, skillful book, revelatory."
Finally here's how Spiotta spruiks her own book, albeit a little alliteratively, in an interview:
"Lightning Field is about the language of consumerism. It is about Los Angeles and alienation. Adultery and loneliness. It is a very funny book."
White Lightning, White Heat, White Noise
Spiotta writes deftly, but it's hard to tell whether she empathises with her "human products", these victims of rampant Los Angelation, and whether we're supposed to, too.
Are they characters to admire or objects of satire? Should we empathise with their predicament or let them slip past into literary oblivion in a "controlled moment of self-regard"?
Which begs the question whether, like one of her characters giving money to vagrants, Spiotta grants them a leading role "not out of sympathy for their suffering, not even out of pity, but as a talisman against them [i.e., against their suffering and pity]."
My plight resembles the way that some readers find it hard to tell whether DeLillo was writing badly or taking the piss in "White Noise".
Whole slabs of description and dialogue sound like they derive from a textbook on Phenomenological Post-Modernism. Did (non-academic) people really talk like this in 2001? Do they still? Is Spiotta immersed in this culture or averse to it?
What are we to think of a novel that can only be regarded as funny, if and when you reach the conclusion that it's ironic (after which you can laugh retroactively)?
The novel's Post-Post-Modern Realism seems to work against drawing this conclusion too readily. Hence, it forces you to suspend judgment, possibly for too long, before laughing. Or, having laughed, a sense of guilt persists.
A blurb for her second novel seems to define the horns of the dilemma:
"Spiotta has a wonderful ironic sensibility, juxtaposing ‘70s fervor with ‘90s expediency."
It's hard to work out whether Spiotta's fervor prevails over her expediency. I want to believe in her, but I'm still equivocating. If I could have got my head around these issues, I would have rated the novel four stars.
In terms of analogy, think of the full-bodied, intense and vigorous whine of a more up-market but self-consciously hipster version of Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" (published the same year), rounded off by the stylish lingering aftertaste of J.G. Ballard and "White Noise" itself.
Regardless of concerns about authorial intention, the bobo characters are clinically well-drawn, the narrative is neatly dissembled and re-assembled. There is clearly a substantive and substantial talent at work here. Besides, if DeLillo likes it, she gets to have her cake and eat it too.
Maybe this assemblage of Spiotta's writing will give you a taste of and for the cake.
"I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit."
[Ecclesiastes 1:14]
SOUNDTRACK:
The Cure - "Hot Hot Hot!!!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0E9u...
Graham Parker- "The Kid With The Butterfly Net"
[From the album "Struck by Lightning"]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A5kD...
Don DeLillo blurbed Dana Spiotta's debut:
"Los Angeles is the air we all breathe in this wonderfully funny, accomplished, and far-reaching first novel about our consumer colossus and the human products it makes and shapes."
And here's Bret Easton Ellis (whom Spiotta has in turn described as a "fascinating and sly writer"):
"A truly convincing L.A. novel: the scraped nerves, the free-floating dissatisfaction, the lingering scenes in chic, empty restaurants and hotel bars, the conversations with the tense inflections that don't reveal anything, the nowhere sex with wandering, absent lovers, a place where everything's a reference to a movie and the pull of wanting to be someone you're not is inescapable – and finally the half-hearted escape and the inevitable return. Dana Spiotta's focus and control and insight are remarkable; this raw, skillful book, revelatory."
Finally here's how Spiotta spruiks her own book, albeit a little alliteratively, in an interview:
"Lightning Field is about the language of consumerism. It is about Los Angeles and alienation. Adultery and loneliness. It is a very funny book."
White Lightning, White Heat, White Noise
Spiotta writes deftly, but it's hard to tell whether she empathises with her "human products", these victims of rampant Los Angelation, and whether we're supposed to, too.
Are they characters to admire or objects of satire? Should we empathise with their predicament or let them slip past into literary oblivion in a "controlled moment of self-regard"?
Which begs the question whether, like one of her characters giving money to vagrants, Spiotta grants them a leading role "not out of sympathy for their suffering, not even out of pity, but as a talisman against them [i.e., against their suffering and pity]."
My plight resembles the way that some readers find it hard to tell whether DeLillo was writing badly or taking the piss in "White Noise".
Whole slabs of description and dialogue sound like they derive from a textbook on Phenomenological Post-Modernism. Did (non-academic) people really talk like this in 2001? Do they still? Is Spiotta immersed in this culture or averse to it?
What are we to think of a novel that can only be regarded as funny, if and when you reach the conclusion that it's ironic (after which you can laugh retroactively)?
The novel's Post-Post-Modern Realism seems to work against drawing this conclusion too readily. Hence, it forces you to suspend judgment, possibly for too long, before laughing. Or, having laughed, a sense of guilt persists.
A blurb for her second novel seems to define the horns of the dilemma:
"Spiotta has a wonderful ironic sensibility, juxtaposing ‘70s fervor with ‘90s expediency."
It's hard to work out whether Spiotta's fervor prevails over her expediency. I want to believe in her, but I'm still equivocating. If I could have got my head around these issues, I would have rated the novel four stars.
In terms of analogy, think of the full-bodied, intense and vigorous whine of a more up-market but self-consciously hipster version of Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" (published the same year), rounded off by the stylish lingering aftertaste of J.G. Ballard and "White Noise" itself.
Regardless of concerns about authorial intention, the bobo characters are clinically well-drawn, the narrative is neatly dissembled and re-assembled. There is clearly a substantive and substantial talent at work here. Besides, if DeLillo likes it, she gets to have her cake and eat it too.
Maybe this assemblage of Spiotta's writing will give you a taste of and for the cake.
"I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit."
[Ecclesiastes 1:14]
MICHAEL
When she was without money, before she had the restaurant, Lorene had only her beauty, her taste, and her style to recommend her.
MINA
She had a laser accuracy for reading other people's desires and vanities...
MICHAEL
...and she could help them actualise those desires as styles and traits and purchasable objects in the world...
MINA
It's a pity Lorene had to quit consulting, end her career as a life-stylist...
MICHAEL
It was inevitable though. She'd finally become so stark and minimalist, so desperate for simplicity and purity, that if she continued she'd need a stylist herself...
MINA
She was obsessed but detached at the same time...
MICHAEL
She was abstracting herself...to a kind of philosophical autism. It's like falling off a cliff, and then you're stuck in a labyrinth of solipsism.
MINA
Still, she drew on six decades of fashion mistakes all juxtaposed, recontextualised, 'deconstructed' by people who really believed fashion was the heart of subversion.
MICHAEL
Fashion is a form of daydreaming.
MINA
I prefer movies.
MICHAEL
You look more like a person in a movie than any person I've ever met.
MINA
I have so many reference points in my head, as many as the memories of my own life.
MICHAEL
Movies?
MINA
Yes… they’ve become nearly equally weighted, the memories of my actual life and the memories of the movies I’ve seen…
MICHAEL
Is there finally that much difference?
MINA
I sometimes think that if someone saw all the movies I’ve seen, the number of times I’ve seen them and in the order I’ve seen them, that person might know exactly who I am...
MICHAEL
That couldn't really be true...
MINA
...but if it was half true, it’d be like my identity was like a collection of references.
MICHAEL
So what occupies you, if not some performance of yourself?
MINA
I’ve just begun to locate my need to be filmed - is it perhaps a particularly female perception...that women are in a way programmed to be animated by the attention of others?...It's as if I am actually being watched...
MICHAEL
Wouldn’t being filmed unhinge your desire, the alchemy of what you are?
MINA
It makes me feel as if I’m somewhere else, some world of bodies and touch, of thought-effacing pleasure.
MICHAEL
It actually has to be pleasurable as well as high-concept. Not just abstract pontificating about the nature of the camera's gaze!
MINA
I desire to be extraordinary in some way.
MICHAEL
You think you can achieve it through sex?
MINA
The cold reality of sex, the way it makes you bodied and exposed to someone not you, my God, the reveling in the body, the hushed words that fly, the desperate feelings...
MICHAEL
...the whispered affections for different body parts...
MINA
There are so many alternative fictions at work in my life right now...secrets, lies, fictions...
MICHAEL
Everyone has secrets.
MINA
The discretion of female sexuality, its secret demureness, its endless interiority - yes, it is secret - solitary and contained at all times.
MICHAEL
It's not necessarily something I want to be cured of - desire.
MINA
I saw this boy today. No more than 18. His gaze travelled right past me. He was completely indifferent to me.
MICHAEL
No look back?
MINA
He gave me no look back!
MICHAEL
I can't believe it.
MINA
I am only thirty-two, and I am invisible to this guy.
MICHAEL
I can’t bear to think of you in the throes of ennui…
MINA
...and then I saw the rest of my life stretched out before me. In a flash. The slow, excruciating dismantling of me as an object of desire.
MICHAEL
No!
MINA
I would no longer command desire. And I felt so upset by this future...
MICHAEL
Maybe it was just the quality of the difference between you, beyond age or gender or geography, but a categorical difference, an absolute, italic difference all the same.
MINA
I want somebody to touch me with reverent slowness.
MICHAEL
A massage...a California come-on...
MINA
For just one time, I want to feel electric and possible.
MICHAEL
Yes!
MINA
Why can't I get what I desire?
MICHAEL
Don't look at me, sister!
MINA
Well, I'm from fucking California and I want a goddamn answer!
SOUNDTRACK:
The Cure - "Hot Hot Hot!!!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0E9u...
Graham Parker- "The Kid With The Butterfly Net"
[From the album "Struck by Lightning"]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A5kD...
September 13, 2014
Stolen from the very vocal chords of Don DeLillo. That's the strongest impression I get, and it shouldn't surprise that DeLillo glowingly praised this debut novel. The vocal calque isn't a negative--entirely. But it's interesting reading this compared to Spiotta's most recent work "Stone Arabia" where the voice and narrative feels and sounds so wholly uninfluenced. It's unique to the characters, and, well more honest.
But that's what this book is really about. Dishonesty and deception and appearances and vapidity. It's what LA is about, or at least what we're led to believe LA is and has always been about. Each main character: Lisa, Mina and Lorene are in varying degrees faced with the idea of LA. The dishonesty and facade. I think of LA as this greasy, runny face behind the Greek persona mask of the American Dream. There is nothing good and pure. There is only what the characters are.
Lisa cleans houses. She has two kids and a pathetically desperate husband
Lorene is in restaurants: high-end, super-exclusive, PoMo (or in the immortal words of Moe Szyslak "all right weird for the sake of weird") restaurants.
Mina helps with the restaurants. She also has a lot of sex that's not with her husband.
The two characters in relationships are in failed ones and Lorene despite her perfect c-cup implants is single and quietly desperate because of it. Also likely she never got past Michael--Mina's crazy paranoid brother.
The characters manage to cobble together a climax, make the whole story appear as though its been perfectly plotted, that they've had agency and purpose this whole time but who are we kidding? They're pushed around more than they move, even though they don't want to think of it that way. You'll like it if you want to read about the very art of being a Los Angelesian...Los Angelesite...LAer? There's an attitude evinced under the layers and language of DeLilloese that is actually evocative of the characters and their place. A kind of honesty that I felt got touched on in Stone Arabia (also placed in LA) a little better. But it very much feels like a first novel.
But that's what this book is really about. Dishonesty and deception and appearances and vapidity. It's what LA is about, or at least what we're led to believe LA is and has always been about. Each main character: Lisa, Mina and Lorene are in varying degrees faced with the idea of LA. The dishonesty and facade. I think of LA as this greasy, runny face behind the Greek persona mask of the American Dream. There is nothing good and pure. There is only what the characters are.
Lisa cleans houses. She has two kids and a pathetically desperate husband
Lorene is in restaurants: high-end, super-exclusive, PoMo (or in the immortal words of Moe Szyslak "all right weird for the sake of weird") restaurants.
Mina helps with the restaurants. She also has a lot of sex that's not with her husband.
The two characters in relationships are in failed ones and Lorene despite her perfect c-cup implants is single and quietly desperate because of it. Also likely she never got past Michael--Mina's crazy paranoid brother.
The characters manage to cobble together a climax, make the whole story appear as though its been perfectly plotted, that they've had agency and purpose this whole time but who are we kidding? They're pushed around more than they move, even though they don't want to think of it that way. You'll like it if you want to read about the very art of being a Los Angelesian...Los Angelesite...LAer? There's an attitude evinced under the layers and language of DeLilloese that is actually evocative of the characters and their place. A kind of honesty that I felt got touched on in Stone Arabia (also placed in LA) a little better. But it very much feels like a first novel.
January 6, 2013
I thought to myself: this is like a mix between Didion and DeLillo. Then I saw the blurb inside the front cover from People magazine that said it was like a mix between Didion and DeLillo. Conclusion: I could write for People magazine.
February 18, 2015
For some reason I thought this was going to be dystopian. Instead, it's just kind of bad, in a 'bad first novel that shows promise' kind of way. And indeed 'Eat the Document,' while far from great, was substantially better than LF. Hopefully Stone Arabia is another big step up.
Do you like bad Don Delillo? Because I'm ambivalent even about moderately good Don Delillo, but Spiotta here has reproduced everything that's unpleasant about his worst books--the stylized but also fakely-naturalized dialogue about ideas that aren't interesting; the random fragmentation of text with no real payoff; the slickness. It's icky. It's not very interesting. It contains what felt like an infinite number of sentences starting "She [verb]", followed by another short sentence starting the same way, followed by another short sentence starting the same way. I assume this choice was meant to do something for me, but it did not.
LF is interesting, though, as a kind of half-way house between the hoary old pomo Delillo stuff (po-faced satire of late capitalism, symbols that are meant to be deeply meaningful but are too often just kind of silly) and the post-9/11 'we should all be very unironic now because irony caused 9/11 but my characters don't seem to know this' stuff. The heroes of LF, if I can simplify wildly, are a housefrau dedicated only to her children, and a possibly schizophrenic academic. They each feel things deeply. They're each set apart from the upper-middle class fads and obsession with surfaces. The academic reads Wittgenstein, and not that easy late stuff, no, he reads the Tractatus, though this and his obsession with the Lightning Field show that he's also deeply flawed because he wants things to be perfectly ordered. The housefrau has a chance to help the academic, but doesn't, because she wants to care for her children.
Meanwhile, the two main characters drive to New York, then go back to LA very soon afterward.
So at some point someone can write a dissertation about the shift from postmodernism to whatever we're all reading now (a friend of mine calls one side of it the 'novel of detachment' in a recent Nation piece. Go Jon!), and as well as DFW, they can point to LF as a missing link. Sadly, I don't want to read these books, and I will not be re-reading this.
Do you like bad Don Delillo? Because I'm ambivalent even about moderately good Don Delillo, but Spiotta here has reproduced everything that's unpleasant about his worst books--the stylized but also fakely-naturalized dialogue about ideas that aren't interesting; the random fragmentation of text with no real payoff; the slickness. It's icky. It's not very interesting. It contains what felt like an infinite number of sentences starting "She [verb]", followed by another short sentence starting the same way, followed by another short sentence starting the same way. I assume this choice was meant to do something for me, but it did not.
LF is interesting, though, as a kind of half-way house between the hoary old pomo Delillo stuff (po-faced satire of late capitalism, symbols that are meant to be deeply meaningful but are too often just kind of silly) and the post-9/11 'we should all be very unironic now because irony caused 9/11 but my characters don't seem to know this' stuff. The heroes of LF, if I can simplify wildly, are a housefrau dedicated only to her children, and a possibly schizophrenic academic. They each feel things deeply. They're each set apart from the upper-middle class fads and obsession with surfaces. The academic reads Wittgenstein, and not that easy late stuff, no, he reads the Tractatus, though this and his obsession with the Lightning Field show that he's also deeply flawed because he wants things to be perfectly ordered. The housefrau has a chance to help the academic, but doesn't, because she wants to care for her children.
Meanwhile, the two main characters drive to New York, then go back to LA very soon afterward.
So at some point someone can write a dissertation about the shift from postmodernism to whatever we're all reading now (a friend of mine calls one side of it the 'novel of detachment' in a recent Nation piece. Go Jon!), and as well as DFW, they can point to LF as a missing link. Sadly, I don't want to read these books, and I will not be re-reading this.
July 18, 2013
Spiotta gets constant comparisons to Delillo and Didion and these aren't imprecise, she offers the almost clinical dissection of the objects and anxieties that define our modern condition of the former and spare and stark style of the latter. Her first book features her at her murkiest, operating in a Bergmanesque fog of confused identity and enigmatic scenes, very detached and opaque most of the times and then almost humorous at others. It is cold book that offers up plenty of satire and surrealism but little cohesion or warmth, with the three main characters interchanged in my mind in way that was either purposely or accidentally confusing. It has great moments but I recommend it a little less readily than her other two available books. Many of her traits are present first here, the brother suffering from mental illness, the extensive grasp of pop culture, old Hollywood movies (and the watching of an actor’s complete filmography, esp. James Mason), and people on film, these and many other elements pop up in her later work but it suffers more in comparison to those books than on its own, an author though is present with a distinct vision and style and almost painfully sad things to say about our present state. Her odd and condensed style is welcome in an era of door-stoppers and overreaching please all narratives, more reminiscent of the opaque and fierce movies of Michelangelo Antonioni, Godard, Fellini, and Bergman than any recent fiction.
May 18, 2011
There's something very sad and grubby about this smartly observed, funny and dark novel. Mina, the novel's main character, and her old friend Lorene present 2 kinds of Los Angeles disaffection. Plain-looking Mina has too many men and too many secrets. For now, gorgeous Lorene has no man at all, but is instead in the thrall of an array of aesthetic obsessions. This might be the first novel I've read where one of the main characters has breast implants. It's also one of the only books I've read that chronicles what a very close female friendship really looks like. I'd have enjoyed this book even more if not for the women's suffocating sexual desperation, and the flatness of Michael, (Mina's brother and Lorene's ex-), who hovers through the story with annoying tragedy, more of a disembodied spirit than a sympathy-evoking character. I also wished Lorene's theme-restaurants were treated a little more like real establishments rather than flip devices -- even though they are brilliant devices. This seems like the book Spiotta had to get out of her system in order to write Eat the Document.
November 10, 2021
Mina walks in LA, including to work where she manages one of Lorene's high-end, high concept restaurants. Mina's brother Michael is Lorene's brilliant, self-abusive ex-lover. Mina's and Michael's father has escaped to a yurt in the Ojai Valley. Mina escapes into generic hotel rooms with one lover and is videotaped by another. Her husband is immersed in old movies and endless revisions of his screenplay. Lorene is not only devoted to her restaurants, but to a high concept gym, where she receives Spirit Exfoliation Therapy. Lisa, Lorene's housekeeper, is flailing and escapes into Lorene's pristine Hollywood Hills home. In this world, surfaces are just as important as interiors. Clothing is a character, another beautiful layer of estrangement. Nudity is a type of clothing. In her first novel, Dana Spiotta creates a dreamy, slightly nauseous simulacrum that exposes the in-between, prohibited, clandestine spaces of a quintessential American city.
June 17, 2024
mid tbh. i don't doubt that spiotta is a good writer, but i didn't find this story compelling or satirical (as it was blurbed...). i wrote the next part of my review about 120 pages in, and i thought that maybe the ending would change my perception (but it did not). self-indulgent narrative on los angeles and alienation — some of which i enjoyed, but most of which i found annoying. these women (mina & lorane) don’t speak or act like women of los angeles/alienation but more like a cheap imitation (romanticization of la that maybe a transplant liberal arts student would narrate their lives like...). the so-called satire on la/vapid culture/alienation feels like it falls flat when it does not recognize or characterize LA well. it feels cheap to add in lines about a “brown esque” woman or hiring japanese women bc they are 'non threatening' when the rest of the novel simply dwells on the mina and lorane (and giving their thoughts so much self-importance on top of that). lisa, the only sort of 'normal' character, isn't given half the attention or importance as mina or lorane. i thought this would change throughout the novel or that there would be a moment of realization for the reader at the silly lives of mina and lorane, but it didn't really happen. for me, the satire was lost.
March 19, 2023
3.25- some of this was really sexy and well written and spoke to some universal truths, but I feel like the story of Lisa was shoe-horned in and not given enough time to develop and intertwine with Lorene and Mina. And was the story that Lisa was Mina and Michael’s half sibling? I’m not very bright so these things need to be spelled out for me lol. Definitely understand the Bret Easton Ellis comparisons but I wanted more satire, LA seems ghoulish and there could have been more of that brought through.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 6, 2021
I picked up a copy of this book after devouring two of Dana Spiotta's other books (Wayward and [[book:Eat the Document|72599]). Lightning Field feels pretty soulless in comparison. It lacks the narrative sparkle that drew me to the other two books.
October 24, 2018
This disturbing debut novel is set in one of the bleakest and most depressing versions of Los Angeles I’ve encountered in some time. It’s not as focused as the later Dana Spiotta novels I’ve read — Stone Arabia & Innocents and Others — but I liked reading Lightning Field, Spiotta’s initial foray into the style and themes that make up her later, brilliant work.
November 8, 2022
Sort of a "book about nothing" but the characters and setting scratched a particular itch for me in terms of Los Angeles iconoclasm. I may have liked it because I related strongly to some of the characters, but regardless of that, Spiotta's writing is fun to read and utterly fantastic. This book does what "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" thinks it is doing.
September 29, 2019
DNF. The characters are vapid. Is that the point? I don't care about any of them.
September 22, 2015
It’s hard to talk about Lightning Field and not compare it to other LA books — it feels like a younger, updated version of Play It As It Lays, a woman’s Less Than Zero. Like Didion’s protagonist, Spiotta’s is a woman who has disconnected from her soul, and who vacillates between looking for it in all the wrong places and just not giving a shit. And like both Ellis and Didion, Spiotta does what LA writers do best: she gloriously, shamelessly celebrates everything that anyone who has ever lived in LA loves, hates, loves to hate, and hates to love about the City of Angels.
That moment when you first realize that the film industry had to take up residence in LA not because it’s a perfectly temperate walled-in basin at the edge of the world but because of the light.
The ironic distaste for what’s “cool” (obscure peaty scotches, perfectly curated record collections, and, of course, vintage clothes).
How using your own feet as a mode of transportation is an act of transgression.
Bizarre evangelist religions.
The ubiquity of sex tapes.
Being obscenely late.
Dietary restrictions.
Freeways.
Yurts.
Ojai.
Will this book feel like one big inside joke to anyone who hasn’t lived in LA? Maybe, but beneath the blanket of Angeleno details, Lightning Field is a coming-of-age story—even though the protagonist is already married, has a career, and multiple lovers—in the way that LA itself is one big coming-of-age story. Reading it is like putting the parts of ourselves that are undeniably tied to this generation under a microscope together and realizing that they’re not that different from what our parents and brothers and sisters may have felt in the 60s and 70s and 80s. After all, Joan Didion’s LA and Brett Easton Ellis’s LA and Dana Spiotta’s LA aren’t that different, cell phones aside.
That moment when you first realize that the film industry had to take up residence in LA not because it’s a perfectly temperate walled-in basin at the edge of the world but because of the light.
The ironic distaste for what’s “cool” (obscure peaty scotches, perfectly curated record collections, and, of course, vintage clothes).
How using your own feet as a mode of transportation is an act of transgression.
Bizarre evangelist religions.
The ubiquity of sex tapes.
Being obscenely late.
Dietary restrictions.
Freeways.
Yurts.
Ojai.
Will this book feel like one big inside joke to anyone who hasn’t lived in LA? Maybe, but beneath the blanket of Angeleno details, Lightning Field is a coming-of-age story—even though the protagonist is already married, has a career, and multiple lovers—in the way that LA itself is one big coming-of-age story. Reading it is like putting the parts of ourselves that are undeniably tied to this generation under a microscope together and realizing that they’re not that different from what our parents and brothers and sisters may have felt in the 60s and 70s and 80s. After all, Joan Didion’s LA and Brett Easton Ellis’s LA and Dana Spiotta’s LA aren’t that different, cell phones aside.
May 16, 2024
First Reading (2021): Dana Spiotta's first novels are sometimes compared to early works of Didion and DeLillo, and it's easy to see why. None of the characters in this tale is very appealing, to be honest, though I don't think having likable characters (or at least one or two) is a necessary criterion for a good book. Los Angeles in "Lightning Field" is an awful place, full of surfaces. Sex has seldom seemed more lifeless, more tedious. The plot structure is difficult, if not off-putting. And when I figured out what the Lightning Field is, I was at a bit of a loss to know why I should care. For all that, Spiotta is a sophisticated writer, and I'm hoping that her later efforts have been more successful. I think I will try another.
Second Reading (2024): Everything I said before is still true. Mina and Lorene are emotional zombies. (This turns out NOT to be a characteristic of all subsequent Spiotta novels, thank God.) There's considerable sex in the story, but exactly none of it seems like fun, let alone caring.
My biases: I lived in Southern California in 1970 and 1971. As a hitchhiker one night, I got a ride from one of the characters in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." I had an underpowered yellow motorcycle. In the winter months, I missed slush. The one friend I made in my year there was a woman just recently from Rochester, New York.
You don't need to read "Lightning Field" to love Dana Spiotta, but if you like her four other novels, you probably will. But no more mention of DeLillo and Didion please. Starting with "Eat the Document, " she sounds like Spiotta. I'd love to buy her a drink.
Second Reading (2024): Everything I said before is still true. Mina and Lorene are emotional zombies. (This turns out NOT to be a characteristic of all subsequent Spiotta novels, thank God.) There's considerable sex in the story, but exactly none of it seems like fun, let alone caring.
My biases: I lived in Southern California in 1970 and 1971. As a hitchhiker one night, I got a ride from one of the characters in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." I had an underpowered yellow motorcycle. In the winter months, I missed slush. The one friend I made in my year there was a woman just recently from Rochester, New York.
You don't need to read "Lightning Field" to love Dana Spiotta, but if you like her four other novels, you probably will. But no more mention of DeLillo and Didion please. Starting with "Eat the Document, " she sounds like Spiotta. I'd love to buy her a drink.
June 24, 2007
Dana Spiotta is a fabulous writer -- totally unsentimental in her delivery, is a master at nonlinear narrative, and astute in her character's observations.
This book however -- just couldn't get into it. Spiotta seems fascinated with our generation's apathy and obsession with pop culture. She plays in to the hyper self-awarenessness of her two leads, Mina and Lorene: long wordy internal monologues about outward appearance, the cinematic nature of everything in LA, the secrets everyone inevitably must have in order to keep the story dynamic - very smartly written, almost too smart (totally implausible dialogue involving genius phrases that just didn't seem like real conversations) -- I didn't really like any of the characters in the book, and felt like I should have just because they were making some ostensibly brilliant observations about themselves and the world around them. I grew tired of reading this story about halfway in. Many interesting details going in to a premise that was not that interesting to me.
This book however -- just couldn't get into it. Spiotta seems fascinated with our generation's apathy and obsession with pop culture. She plays in to the hyper self-awarenessness of her two leads, Mina and Lorene: long wordy internal monologues about outward appearance, the cinematic nature of everything in LA, the secrets everyone inevitably must have in order to keep the story dynamic - very smartly written, almost too smart (totally implausible dialogue involving genius phrases that just didn't seem like real conversations) -- I didn't really like any of the characters in the book, and felt like I should have just because they were making some ostensibly brilliant observations about themselves and the world around them. I grew tired of reading this story about halfway in. Many interesting details going in to a premise that was not that interesting to me.
April 11, 2013
A very slick, polished book for a debut novel. The characters are all aloof and distant to me, but they were well developed. I like Spiotta's writing a lot, but I always feel like I'm on the outside of the scenes looking in through a window; I just don't ever develop any closeness to any of her characters.
This story takes place in Hollywood, and definitely feels L.A.-ish, from Spiotta's use of film as a metaphor and all the references to movies and actors. It follows the lives of three women, and really delves into their psyches, from quirks to neuroses in their relationships with one other and with other characters in the book. The author really has a gift for capturing the lifestyles and the mindset of contemporary society.
Interestingly, I think this book was better than "Stone Arabia", her third novel that gained a lot of acclaim. Not as good as her sophomore effort, "Eat the Document".
This was closer to a 3 1/2 star for me, but I'm only giving it a 3* rating.
This story takes place in Hollywood, and definitely feels L.A.-ish, from Spiotta's use of film as a metaphor and all the references to movies and actors. It follows the lives of three women, and really delves into their psyches, from quirks to neuroses in their relationships with one other and with other characters in the book. The author really has a gift for capturing the lifestyles and the mindset of contemporary society.
Interestingly, I think this book was better than "Stone Arabia", her third novel that gained a lot of acclaim. Not as good as her sophomore effort, "Eat the Document".
This was closer to a 3 1/2 star for me, but I'm only giving it a 3* rating.
February 28, 2012
Like all of Dana Spiotta's books, this novel has a tart, dry tone, which I quite like. The ending wasn't as strong a resolution as the characters deserved, but I think that's a common failing of first novels. The characters are really great, especially Mina; she really seems like a person when in a lesser writer's hands I think she would just be a collection of quirks. Spiotta is sensitive here to the disturbing lack of privacy and autonomy inherent to a more interconnected and relentlessly examined online world (you don't necessarily control your image or where it ends up and what uses it is put toward); in fact, these things have gotten much worse in the decade or so since this book was written, so in a way she seems almost prophetic. I think this book is very much worth reading, although Eat the Document, Spiotta's second novel, is better in every way.
June 11, 2009
I stumbled across Dana Spiotta's "Eat The Document" a month or so ago at a used bookstore on the $2 table and decided to give it a try. I enjoyed that book so much, I picked up her first book, "Lightning Field" at the library quickly after. I read it briskly, but not without feeling a bit empty. I would summarize this book as a book of "space" -- the need for space from our self, our work, our surroundings, our significant others, etc...really boiling down to the articulation (or not) of our unconscious space. With the California connection, I would liken this a bit to some of Joan Didion's work about the often eccentric characters and lifestyles often found in California.
July 3, 2021
7/20/2019 --- As with all of Spiotta's books, this reads like a complicated set interlocking pieces that come together and shift apart as the narrative dictates. 3rd person becomes 1st person becomes script within pages of each other, because why not? Because it's what the story, in seeking understanding of what it is to function human(e)ly in a hyper-capitalistic modern city, wants. The dialogue here is delightful (this is definitely Spiotta's funniest novel), but it too turns on sharp shifts, harsh realities, human cruelties. Dense, yes, but FUN, and as smart as anything I've read. Hard to believe this is a first novel; first books shouldn't be so virtuosic.
September 8, 2014
Lightning Field…marvelous work. The sarcastic commentary about the frivolous aspects of people’s lives, layered with an undercurrent of such serious introspection. Mina’s raw sensuousness and unfathomable neediness combined to make her such an appealing character. The relationships interweaving through all the characters revealed such an intriguing network of the flaws and imperfections that make all of us so interesting.
Ms. Spiotta's writing sucked me in to the narrative. Her use of language is precise and fluid.
Ms. Spiotta's writing sucked me in to the narrative. Her use of language is precise and fluid.
March 6, 2016
Even though the main(ish?) protagonist is fucked up, she's not a female fuck-up because she's not rejecting the societal norm and setting out on her own, dedicated path. She's vaguely Hollywood, stuck on beauty and sex. There are other characters whose POVs we get, and it lends an amorphous, loose, unfinished air to a book that, itself, I would consider to be the female fuck-up: It's rejecting a strong sense of cohesion which feels to be a dedicated stylistic choice. It just happens to fail (which, so do many a female fuck-up). Might give this 2.5 stars if I could.
March 22, 2016
Please don't ask me what this book is about. I just finished it, and already I've forgotten. I'm not really sure why I even read it, since my nightstand is loaded with other, more gripping books. More than anything, it reminds me of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, only less coherent and not quite as structurally inventive. (And I didn't exactly love Goon Squad. Heresy, I know!)
I'm not giving on Dana Spiotta, though. Next time, I'll try Eat the Document or Stone Arabia, the books that Spiotta fans keep recommending.
I'm not giving on Dana Spiotta, though. Next time, I'll try Eat the Document or Stone Arabia, the books that Spiotta fans keep recommending.
August 2, 2007
Interesting book. She gets away with a lot of not having many of the sections have much immediate effect on any of the others (i.e. nothing "happening") and I was sold by the part early on when the main character buys makeup and then realizes she doesn't want any of it only after she gets out on the street and looks in the bag. I hope this book is the new, quieter way in less conventional "popular" fiction. It's a pretty good step, at least.
March 18, 2010
Because I am a big fan of Spiotta's Eat the Document (highly recommended), I decided to read her first novel, Lightning Field. Spiotta's sort of "hipster narrative" was a little difficult to accept at first (it actually took me two times to get through this book) but once you get into the flow of it, it really works. The book very nicely captures the atmosphere of life in Los Angeles (although, in this case, it's not one that makes you want to live there)...
October 2, 2011
At first, I thought: yuck, these characters are shallow, vain and stupid. But I kept reading, because it was easy enough to skate through a few pages at bedtime. Suddenly, about 1/3 of the way in, I was more interested. Pretty soon, I could not put it down.
Somehow the main character became more compelling, without necessarily undergoing any transformation. At the end I thought, "how did she do that?"
I'm adding Spiotta to my list of authors to read.
Somehow the main character became more compelling, without necessarily undergoing any transformation. At the end I thought, "how did she do that?"
I'm adding Spiotta to my list of authors to read.
July 19, 2010
Spiotta's good, but this was no Eat the Document, which I loved. A story of three (though one gets less treatment) women in contemporary LA. I enjoyed it while I was reading it, in part because the two primary women are a little more aggressive (with men, with work) than a lot of women in books, but I think I'll end up forgetting the book. It feels fleeting.
April 17, 2012
It's weird to read someone's first novel after reading the rest of her books. This novel is kind of a mess. The structure is a bit all over the place. The two main characters have almost identical voices so that they blend too much. But, there is still some really good writing here. I love how far she's come since writing this book, but this isn't her best.
February 18, 2013
nauseatingly self-involved. the prose is good, but the unlikeable characters sleeping around a plotless novel? the best prose in the world can't save a sinking ship. the most compelling relationship is the one between mina and michael, and all of it happens in the past.
so disappointed. the structure is god awful.
so disappointed. the structure is god awful.
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