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A collection of startling and breathtaking stories about people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know.
A New York Times Notable Book
A man tells a story to a woman sitting beside him on a plane, little suspecting what it reveals about his capacity for cruelty and contempt. A callow runaway girl is stranded in a strange city with another woman’s fractiously needy children. An uncomprehending father helplessly lashes out at the daughter he both loves and resents. In these raw, startling, and incandescently lovely stories, the author of Veronica yields twelve indelible portraits of people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know. Because They Wanted To is further evidence that Gaitskill is one of the fiercest, funniest, and most subversively compassionate writers at work today.
A New York Times Notable Book
A man tells a story to a woman sitting beside him on a plane, little suspecting what it reveals about his capacity for cruelty and contempt. A callow runaway girl is stranded in a strange city with another woman’s fractiously needy children. An uncomprehending father helplessly lashes out at the daughter he both loves and resents. In these raw, startling, and incandescently lovely stories, the author of Veronica yields twelve indelible portraits of people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know. Because They Wanted To is further evidence that Gaitskill is one of the fiercest, funniest, and most subversively compassionate writers at work today.
50 Reviews
3.5
Abby
Created 12 days agoShare
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abby 🐦🔥
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james🌻
Created 7 months agoShare
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“'I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope / For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love / For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith / But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. / Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.
...
We went among the sleeping plants. The ladybugs tumbled from our bags and tooled about on petal and leaf with all their diligent legs. My friends giggled and joked. I dropped two ladybugs on the soft flesh of a petunia; it bobbed gently as the tiny creatures alighted. I thought how vast and deeply textured the surface of the flower must be to them, how huge and abstract the garden. My imagination opened in one small deep spot. For a moment I felt I was in a limbo of shadows and half-formed shapes which would dissolve into nothingness if I touched them. I felt loneliness so strong it scared me. Then Jana laughed and Erin brushed by me, thoughtlessly caressing my spine with one hand. I was in a garden with my friends. I could not fully see what lay about me, but still, I knew it was there, abundant, breathing, and calm.'
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this was hands-down the best short story collection I've yet read. gaitskill's prose was so cutting, so, at times, curt and unrelenting, and her handling of psychology so astute and deft, I was completely floored. will be returning to ALL of these in times to come”
Lola
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ryan
Created 10 months agoShare
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About Mary Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill’s novel, Veronica, was nominated for a 2005 National Book Award and was one of The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2005. She is also the author of the acclaimed novels Because They Wanted To and Two Girls, Fat and Thin. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). Her short story “Secretary” was the basis for the film of the same name. She lives in New York.
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