stone arabia by dana spiotta
Are you still an artist if you don't have an audience? In spare prose reminiscent of Joan Didion, Dana Spiotta tells the story of Nik and Denise Worth, aging siblings who grew up during the 1970s-80s in Los Angeles and were involved in the art scene, Nik as a member of up-and-coming local band the Fakes and Denise as an actress. When singer-songwriter Nik's break-out deal with a big label turned sour in the 1980s, he turned inward, and began writing the "Chronicles," or the documented fantasy life of a successful musician complete with fabricated album reviews. Although she have up acting decades earlier, Denise's life isn't completely meaningless. She has a daughter she loves and a guy she gets together with every couple of weeks, but ultimately her existence is streaked with regret and painful self- awareness that she "had strayed from an acceptable course, that our lives were going in the wrong direction: I actually thought those words, how far we h...