Spiotta's novels, always rich with ideas and atmosphere, often focus on the arts: In her 2011 book, Stone Arabia, the art is music in Innocents and Others, which came out in 2016, film is at the story's center. Shots - Health News As Menopause Nears, Be Aware It Can Trigger Depression And Anxiety, Too (Who among us cannot identify?) Here's how Spiotta describes Sam's stirred-up psyche: This story opens on a restless Sam having trouble sleeping.

As a long-time fan, I went back and looked at the reviews I've written of Spiotta's earlier work: In every review, I've used the word 'smart.' Spiotta is one of the most alert, ambitious, nuanced, and, yes, smartest of our contemporary novelists.īecause Wayward is set in 2017, it's not 'only' about one woman going internally haywire, but about the entire country roiling in the wake of the 2016 presidential election and the rise of the #Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements. If this premise sounds melodramatic, that's not the kind of writer Spiotta is. She leaves her husband and her teenage daughter in the suburbs of Syracuse and impulsively moves into a dilapidated Arts and Crafts-style bungalow in a crumbling downtown neighborhood of that city. Dana Spiotta's new novel, Wayward, is about a 53-year-old woman named Samantha - Sam - Raymond, who's going through menopause and becomes a little unhinged.

Wayward lives