Lightning Field Book Review
There’s a question at the start of Lightning Field by Dana Spiotta that acts as a bit of a microcosm for the book: Whatever happened to sugar cubes?
As the novel opens, two women sit in a diner and wonder how the things might have disappeared from roadside restaurants around America. Was it a matter of hygiene? Is it easier to limit the amount of sugar a customer uses by measuring them into paper slips? Do people actually prefer the new format of dispensation? And, more importantly, would there be any appreciation for sugar cubes if they were still around? That is, as the protagonist suggests, maybe sugar cubes seem pleasing just because they’re gone, and that kind of detail brings you pleasure only as a contemplated lost thing, the pleasing nature of it realised only because of its absence. It’s this kind of investigation into the banal that characterises much of Lightning Field, though that isn’t to say Dana Spiotta doesn’t approach more salacious subject matter than restaurant condiments.
The plot of the book mostly follows a thirty-something woman named Mina, who is bored with her marriage, has been engaged in a pair of affairs with other men, and has struggled to balance the complications of all that with her job in the upscale restaurant industry of LA. At the start of the book, Mina is fleeing whatever chaos has erupted in the fallout from her choices. We learn about what happened as the story zips back and forth along the timeline of her life. But this isn’t exactly constructed like some page-turner mystery that entices you along to books end. In fact, while I was curious as to what might have gone wrong for Mina, it was apparent from the get-go that the book would be more of an exploration of the idiosyncrasies in her relationships rather than any kind of melodrama with shocking revelations.
The inner cover of Lightning Field features a whole host of praise from publications like Esquire and People magazine, but there are also a few choice authors putting their two cents in, which by their presence hint at who this book might be aimed at. Bret Easton Elis, the author of American Pyscho, congratulates Spiotta for creating a convincing portrait of the LA scene, in which free-floating people that dot the empty restaurants and hotel bars make half-hearted attempts at escaping their empty lives. And indeed, Spiotta populates the book with long lists of brand name products that would have made Bret Easton Elis’ Patrick Bateman proud. Still, while the magic of those neverending trademark lists in American Pyscho came from Patrick’s hypnotic fixation on them, here, the characters’ bored detachment from the brands translated over to me, the reader. One of the other review blurbs points out how Spiotta seems to be a bit of a spiritual successor to Don DeLillo, and fittingly enough, Don DeLillo himself highlights themes in the story that are similar to his own when he sums up the novel as about a consumer colossus and the human products it makes and shapes. But, once again, I felt like if you want something along those lines, you’re probably better off going back to Don DeLillo himself. So really, at the end of the day, the recommendation I’d give for Lightning Field is based on whether you enjoy that question about the sugar cubes. There are certainly interesting, delicately rendered characters in the book, and plenty of sexually charged situations to analyse and pick apart. But any joy you get from it will probably come from the inner monologues the cast experience as they ponder over things like whether their sparring partners retort in an argument was genuine, or if they just learned to react that way from a movie, and whether the lack of seasons in LA is actually driving the people there insane?
You know, when you go through a book like this, where it really just seems to be about a bunch of people meandering through the in-between frames of their lives, you might think that it’s just their thoughts that are of importance, but in actuality, the story is asking you to put the same amount of effort into reading between the lines as the author did when writing them. In the case of Lightning Field, Spiotta has layered the story with subtle differences between characters that give you plenty to mull over as you compare them, and as it happens, contrast is probably one of the most prominent themes of the book. For example, the solution to Mina’s compulsion towards meaningless affairs is offered in the almost religious sanctity her friend grants to the sexual experience, while her friend’s years-long frustration at being abstinent would have an apparent fix in the excitement Mina feels on finding a new partner. Of course, this doesn’t mean Spiotta is saying the so-called solutions to their problems are any more valuable than the problems themselves. If anything, the point of it seems to be that it’s the complications in life that make it a life at all. All told, if you’re to enjoy the type\ of ambiguity Spiotta has invited you to revel in, it will probably come down to if you like the characters involved. And of that, I would only encourage you to find out for yourself. In the meantime, if you’re looking for me to offer more of a thorough critique of some weighty literature, then I suggest you check out my video on The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.
