Lightning Field

Every once in a while I read a book that leaves me changed. Lightning Field is one of those rare books that is so disturbingly refreshing I cannot help but be affected by it. Spiota's style is wonderfully indescribable. While most first time authors weave a story of stolen stylistic interpretations, Spiota's style is all her own. The haunting ending might leave some literary fuddy-duddies asking "Why?" But those of you that are tired of reading the same "written formula" in book after uninventive book will breath a sigh of relief. This book is ground breaking and will leave you thinking...for a long time.

Dana Spiotta's Lightning Field is an interesting first novel that initially seemed a little disjointed to me, but then I realized that the disjointedness is the whole point. The novel follows three women in contemporary LA. Mina works at Lorene's upscale, super successful restaurants, is having affairs with two men and is perpetually late because she won't ride in cars any more. Lorene has her own issues, trying to find some sort of satisfaction through new age remedies like spiritual exfoliation. Lisa cleans Lorene's house, trying to scrape by and support her five year old twins and survive her marginally successful marriage. Lisa is the only "real" character in the novel, although Mina and Lorene certainly are believable. Their successes and LA have removed them from what is real, from what Lisa's struggles are all about. The disjointedness in the novel only highlights the disjointedness of Mina and Lorene's life. The writing is marvelous in this novel; it's quick-witted and entertaining, while also being thought-provoking. There are many layers in Lightning Field, enjoy discovering them.

Lightning Field is as nuanced and sublime a portrait of life and lifers in contemporary LA as can be found. It is alternately grim and hilarious, as the three protagonists, almost artifacts themselves, stray through the land of artificial. Throughout, old hollywood ghosts and archaic american slang (Eureka, for example) punctuate what is really a document of today. Other old things invested with new life or cast in bright new light: 60's hippie/drug culture-- the "new age," and the library of black and white and technicolor tombs that innundate Mina, our central charater, and her brain.The characters are not innoculated against the late capitalist infrastructure that surrounds them, and either are we. The evidence for this is in the author's immense talents at rendering comedy from the blight of shopping and the ugliness of a cool chain of concept restaurants that seem dreadful and unreal. Wool stockings and make-up never sounded so fascinating. The novel assails our current dilema with brilliant turns of wit--the author manages to nail the protagonists and the reader with the sharpest of bullets.The title refers, tragically and with echoes of the Catcher in the Rye, to the unattainable-- in fact it refers to the unnameable even.

I found 'The Lightning Field' to be delightful. Dana Spiotta has truly burst onto the literary stage with all the wit of an Updike or Armistead Maupin, the pace and intricacy of a Robert Altman screenplay and the subtlety and nuance of Gore Vidal. In short, fantastic, witty, insightful on the many facets of our complex urban lives and loves, and a real stonker of a read. Please please tell us you're working on a sequel, Dana Spiotta!

A slick, funny and sentient first novel about the waking dream that is Los Angeles and three women's respective pursuits for meaning within its lonely and distorted Hollywood hall of mirrors.This book should be a shoo-in for the PENN/Faulkner award, and a welcome companion to the works of Don Delillo, Joan Didion and Brett Easton Ellis.