Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There are points in this book where I was so frustrated with the clunky attempts at post-post-modern structure games that I had to put it down. Reading through all the positive reviews of this work, I almost feel I must've read a different book. This is not a "rock'n'roll" novel but instead a mish-mash of prose about two sad people living pathetic lives. There's little here that's compelling although the character "Nik" has his moments. The forced connections between the narrator Denise's obsession with various current events (which, sadly all read as very dated at this point) and her inability to connect to the mess that is her life, left me frustrated not so much with the character (as was the obvious goal) but with the writer. The 2 main characters here are supposedly 47 and 50 but read more like they're in their late 50's. Of course, since the bulk of the narrative is told in first person removed - Denise's story told via a series of writings she creates on the event of her brother's disappearance - we cannot know what is simply Denise's skewed POV and what is actually happening in the narrative. The shifts from third back into stilted first person served only to break the narrative flow and did nothing toward creating a more compelling narrative. Overall, there is much that shows potential here and Nik's character (albeit a cliche of the failed rock musician/narcissist) reads as somewhat interesting. What this book needs is a good editorial spanking. Or at least an editor who would make this obviously talented writer work harder to tell a compelling, cohesive narrative. That this novel has received such rave reviews I find, to be honest, depressing. I'd give it a B minus at best.

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