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Don't Cry (Vintage Contemporaries) by…
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Don't Cry (Vintage Contemporaries) (original 2009; edition 2010)

by Mary Gaitskill

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26011101,727 (3.25)25
Mary Gaitskill returns with a luminous new collection of stories-her first in more than ten years. In "College Town 1980," young people adrift in Ann Arbor, Michigan, debate the meaning of personal strength at the start of the Reagan era; in the urban fairy tale "Mirror Ball," a young man steals a girl's soul during a one-night stand; and in "The Little Boy," a woman haunted by the death of her husband is finally able to grieve through a mysterious encounter with a needy child. Each story delivers the powerful, original language and the dramatic engagement of the intelligent mind with the craving body-or of the intelligent body with the craving mind-that has come to be seen as stunningly emblematic of Gaitskill's fiction.… (more)
Member:marls
Title:Don't Cry (Vintage Contemporaries)
Authors:Mary Gaitskill
Info:Vintage (2010), Paperback, 240 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:***
Tags:Fiction, short stories

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Don't Cry: Stories by Mary Gaitskill (2009)

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» See also 25 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 11 (next | show all)
Each of the short stories in this collection went on a bit longer than I felt it should. However, I'm not really sure if that's a criticism. Gaitskill's writing is raw and sharp. Each time I started a new story, I thought to myself - I could just stop here and not finish the book. But with each new story, each slow beginning, I found the earth giving way beneath my feet until I tumbled all the way in, unable to stop reading until the story eventually circled back on itself coming to an end.

I don't know who I would recommend this book to, even I didn't want to finish it. I HAD to finish it.
  paroof | Nov 30, 2022 |
Near-perfect incisions into the human soul, desire, the ego and the id, from the best American writer working today. ( )
  boredgames | Aug 17, 2019 |
I couldn’t even remember why I bought this book once I started reading it. The stories were horrible and very hard to read. Though I only made it through one and a half stories I felt as though my IQ points were dropping like flies. I couldn’t see any rhyme or reason for any of the stories that I read and there seemed to be only one main theme to each one and that was sex, and not the kind of sex that I really wanted to read about EVER. ( )
  chaoticbooklover | Dec 26, 2018 |
Mary Gaitskill's career hits a speed bump with "Don't Cry," the oddly subdued follow-up to her breakout novel, "Veronica." These new stories sport a fillip of the surreal and a dash of riot-girl sass, but the prose feels simultaneously vague and fussed-over, in that portentous MFA-workshop way. The narratives, which often depict damaged or unhappy women bumping up against indifference or cruelty, seem unfocused and tired; at least two feature long descriptions of dream sequences, a sure sign of authorial laziness. (From THE WASHINGTON POST, July 8, 2009) ( )
  MikeLindgren51 | Aug 7, 2018 |
I grabbed this book because everyone who reviews short stories seems to hold Gaitskill as the best of the genre. Although she can really write, I did not enjoy the reading. Miserable characters in unappealing situations, making bad choices. No one is ever happy, including the reader. I have read some very disturbing stories this summer (Oprah's latest selection!) but this collection is entirely forgettable. ( )
  Rdra1962 | Aug 1, 2018 |
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Mary Gaitskill returns with a luminous new collection of stories-her first in more than ten years. In "College Town 1980," young people adrift in Ann Arbor, Michigan, debate the meaning of personal strength at the start of the Reagan era; in the urban fairy tale "Mirror Ball," a young man steals a girl's soul during a one-night stand; and in "The Little Boy," a woman haunted by the death of her husband is finally able to grieve through a mysterious encounter with a needy child. Each story delivers the powerful, original language and the dramatic engagement of the intelligent mind with the craving body-or of the intelligent body with the craving mind-that has come to be seen as stunningly emblematic of Gaitskill's fiction.

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