Denise and Nik grew up in the ’70s LA music scene. Nik—handsome and gifted, with a knack for songwriting—was a star on the rise. Denise, his sister, was his biggest fan. Now, fleeting success long behind him, Nik makes his art in isolation, painstakingly documenting his own work. Denise is his most devoted audience—sometimes his only audience.
Then her daughter, Ada, decides to make a film revealing Nik’s underground career.
Stone Arabia is a novel about family and memory, celebrity and obsession. It’s about the urge to create, and the search for authenticity.
Praise for Stone Arabia: With her novel’s clever structure,
jaundiced affection for Los Angeles, and diamond- honed prose,
Spiotta (National Book Award finalist for Eat the Document)
delivers one of the most moving and original portraits of a sibling
relationship in recent fiction.
Publisher's Weekly
Is there a more electrifying novelist working than Dana
Spiotta?…[Stone Arabia] makes for a sharp character study: A
portrait of the artist as middle-aged never-was. Yet Spiotta’s
genius is to recognize that Nik’s journey is representative not
just for his sister or his mother but for every one of us.
David Ulin, LA Times
Added to the brilliant glitter of Ms. Spiotta’s earlier work —
so reminiscent, at times, of early Don DeLillo and early Joan
Didion — is something deeper and sadder: not just alienation, but a
hard-won awareness of mortality and passing time… both a clever
meditation on the feedback loop between life and art, and a moving
portrait of a brother and sister, whose wild youth on the margins
of the rock scene has given way to the disillusionments and
vexations of middle age.
Michiko Katutani, New York Times
Stone Arabia is a rock n’ roll novel like no other. Where desire
for legacy tangles with fantasy. And identity and memory are in and
out of control. A loser’s game of conceit, deceit, passion, love
and the raw mystery of superstar desire.
Thurston Moore, singer/guitarist for Sonic Youth
