Mary Gaitskill

Gaitskill's first novel is dense, dark, and fiercely evocative. It depicts two very different yet similar women who eventually bond in a way neither one has experienced. Both have endured abusive childhoods, and are connected by their mutual interest in a once influential novelist. The story is simple enough, but Gaitskill's writing is sophisticated and precise; she has a talent for fully submerging her audience into the internal lives of her characters. This book is not for everybody, and I show more mean that in a good way. show less

The phrase ‘bad girls have all the fun’ was coined by the first woman who recognized her power to weaponize sex.

Reputations are residual depictions of distorted control, because they are based on portrayed undercurrents and cemented by the dull edges of brutal dishonesty. Women gain respectability by maintaining situationally compliant social and emotional stability. But some push beyond convention, and others do not take issue with sitting in discomfort.

Written by Mary Gaitskill and show more set in and around the Lower East Side, the stories in the Bad Behavior collection are classic portrayals of women using intimacy to reclaim and redefine personal agency. Initially published in 1988, it includes nine disjointed sketches that highlight profound moments of isolation during intimacy, a recurring theme throughout.

Beyond its powerful ability to highlight the differences in desire, romance, and seduction, this work portrays relationships as spaces where people attempt to communicate unspoken needs by playing roles that blur boundaries. Filled with the designer drugs, fashions, and hedonism of the era, it depicts the unpredictability of loneliness. It uses economic instability to symbolize the internal decay caused by living in big cities, and it will not appeal to readers who prefer tidy moral judgments.

A timeless exploration of the boundaries between passion, emotional investment, and decency, this collection features numerous female protagonists as they pursue self-discovery with varying degrees of submission. A sophisticated depiction of nooky as an experiment aimed at achieving psychological intimacy, it offers an ambiguous look at sex as a form of self-protection.

Published by the Vintage Contemporaries division of Penguin Random House, this title delivers sexually liberated truth on steroids. Bursting with stylistically layered yet straightforward dialogue, this book will force readers with a low threshold for relations based on cruelty, financial transactions, or misinterpreted longing to seek refuge.

With openly candid stories filled with vague yet artistically bold references to the nature of sexual power dynamics to evolve into a detached survival mechanism, this work profoundly acknowledges the inertia that drives humans to use intimacy to form superficial connections.

A textured and intense read, it remains as fresh today as it was during its initial release. At its core, each story explores longing and the idea that sex and romance are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Bibliophiles who appreciate erotically charged writing will see the connection between female empowerment and the hidden resentment that surfaces when intercourse is reduced to or sustained by fantasy.

A unique mix of shock value, eroding homeostasis, symbolic chaos, and emotional drifting, it is an honest depiction of the alienation that accompanies intelligent addicts, fast-track professionals, partygoers, and urban inhabitants. Rooted in adult dysfunction and weighing in at 205 pages, it is the perfect favor to include in bachelorette party gift bags! show less

I first read this one back in the nineties when Mary Gaitskill was a bright, shocking young thing and, perhaps unsurprisingly, what struck me most about it was these stories was the frankness with which they treated sex, the easy cruelty with which the characters treated each other, and the author's cool, ironic attitude toward these subjects. Re-reading them fifteen years later, other aspects of Gaitskill's work seem more prominent. Her writer's voice may seem somewhat detached, but show more Gaitskill's characters are capable of intense emotion and longing. Her characters may treat sex and relationships somewhat casually, but she describes their emotional states and deeply felt-emotions in preternatural detail. What many people consider to be "important relationship issues" are tossed off in a sentence or two, but the author's not afraid to linger for paragraphs on a telling personal detail or a meaningful anecdote. Gaitskill's the kind of writer who's willing to spend three sentences discussing the significance of a character's keychain or describing their crow's feet. I suppose that this may lose the sort reader who might pick this book up on the strength of its outré reputation, but although this may seem like fine work, Gaitskill is, at the same time, a remarkably economical writer. In these stories, every detail, every off-kilter feeling, and every social interaction counts. The woman knows how to construct a character.

Gaitskill's reputation as a writer who specializes in human cruelty is probably closer to the mark. There are a few happy endings here, but not many. In a sense, she's a writer that specializes in collision and impact, both emotional and sexual. It's not that her characters are dead to the world, although many of them certainly feel numbed, it's that their capacity to experience emotion tends mostly toward various flavors of pain and anguish. Emotionally, they exist mostly in terms of the negative. But that's different than being emotionally dead: raw and emotionally vulnerable, the events described here threaten to collapse the strategies they've painstakingly constructed to make it through their lives. When a bit of transcendence does creep in, it's hard earned and feels especially gratifying. This is especially true of the linked set of short stories that ends the book. After a typically chaotic series of events involving professional disappointment, miscommunication, awkward casual sexual encounters, and substance abuse, the story ends with four friends -- and apparently occasional lovers -- sitting together in a nighttime garden, in the dark but wonderfully conscious of each other's presence. The relief I felt upon reading this scene was enormous. Human connection in these stories is a rare, hard-won thing, but Gaitskill seems to be arguing that it might actually be worth the trouble, too. show less

In short, a book about relationships and sex for grown-ups. Gaitskill’s characters occupy a mean, raw world; they are vulnerable, confused, and desperate, trying to find something (usually each other) to help them deal with a world that is threatening in its aggressive meaninglessness.

The characters in these stories are capable of breathless desire and genuineness, but also of heartless distance, banal cruelty or ugly, emotional viciousness. Plus there’s sex, lots of sex—treated show more completely unsentimentally and honestly; it’s complex, messy, often unsatisfying, and sometimes damaging. show less