A review by annaelisereads
Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta

3.0

Given its spectacular reviews, I wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. Honestly, it took me until about 50% of the way into the book to get all the themes straight and start enjoying how they built and played off of each other: what is real? is it objective? or it what we create? is all reality subjective? who are you? what makes you who you are? Nik - the aging one-hit wonder of a rocker - struggles with these as he creates an alternative history of a spectacular career, a sprawling collection of fake documents he calls “The Chronicles. Denise - his older sister - loses her sense of self (and her credit rating I assume) taking care of Nik, her elderly mother suffering from dementia (see theme again!), and even in her boundless empathy for the newsworthy tragedies you may remember from the recent past. If you would like a meta, post-modern story with lots of musical references, I vote to read it.