Lightning Field: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: tain-ment
Review: a decent, quick read. yes, she has read "white noise" a few times.
two issues:
--the "this is how LA people are" bit got a tired; in a 220 page novel maybe a little less space could be spent on the obvious revelations that they have breast implants, they relate real life to the movies and they eat those "wacky" foods.
--towards the end of the book the author was still giving us back story rather than plot/character pay off.

Rating:
Summary: Conceptually Morbid
Review: A first novel by a woman who grew up on the fringes of movie culture in California. Exquisite in its bitterness, humorous in the driest of martini ways, Dana offers us a conceptually morbid but witty view of Los Angeles on par with Bret Easton Ellis. Spiotta does not compromise her occasional poetic moments in her efforts to depict honestly/ironically the hollow and hapless souls she has cast in this quite worthwhile book.
The book does lack plot-but the character driven nature of it makes it worth delving into.

Jaye Beldo: [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: An Enlightening Gem
Review: 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.