Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Two Girls, Fat and Thin
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0141993960

The intense, caustically funny first novel from the bestselling author of Bad Behaviour 'Dark, menacing and original' Joanna Briscoe, Guardian Dorothy Never - fat - lives alone in New York, eats and works the night shift as a proofreader. Justine Shade - thin - is a freelance journalist who sleeps with unsuitable men. Both are isolated. Both are damaged by their pasts. When Justine interviews Dorothy about her involvement with an infamous and charismatic philosophical guru, the two women are drawn together with an intense magnetism that throws their lives off balance. Mary Gaitskill's first novel is an intense, darkly funny and caustic portrayal of loneliness and the search for intimacy. 'What makes her scary, and what makes her exciting, is her ability to evoke the hidden life, the life unseen, the life we don't even know we are living' Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

Veronica

Veronica
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2013-03-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307833321

A finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, here is an evocative novel about female friendship in the glittering 1980s. One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Alison and Veronica meet amid the nocturnal glamour of 1980s New York: One is a young model stumbling away from the wreck of her career, the other an eccentric middle-aged office temp. Over the next twenty years their friendship will encompass narcissism and tenderness, exploitation and self-sacrifice, love and mortality. Moving seamlessly from present and past, casting a fierce yet compassionate eye on two eras and their fixations, the result is a work of timeless depth and moral power.

Bad Behavior

Bad Behavior
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2012-03-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1451687079

National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s debut collection, Bad Behavior—powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation that is searching for human connection. Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it first published, heralding Gaitskill’s arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as one of the sharpest, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writing talents of contemporary literature. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called it “Pinteresque,” saying, “Ms. Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail, that she is able to make even the most extreme situations seem real…her reportorial candor, uncompromised by sentimentality or voyeuristic charm…underscores the strength of her debut.”

The Devil's Treasure

The Devil's Treasure
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2023-08-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1946022829

"In this searching biography of the writer’s imagination, Mary Gaitskill excavates her own novels, revealing their origins and obsessions, the personal and societal pressures that formed them, and the life story hidden between their pages. Using the techniques of collage, The Devil's Treasure splices fiction together with commentary and personal history, and with the fairy tale that gives the book its title, about a little girl who ventures into Hell through a suburban trapdoor." -- Publisher's website.

This Is Pleasure

This Is Pleasure
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1524749141

Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.

Because They Wanted To

Because They Wanted To
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2012-03-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439127972

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.

The Mare

The Mare
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2015
Genre: Dominican Americans
ISBN: 0307379744

Taken in by a near-alcoholic artist and a jaded academic, a young Dominican girl in Brooklyn's Fresh Air Fund program explores the contrasts between her inner-city life and her hosts' privileged world and finds her realities powerfully shaped by her relationship with a horse.

The Accidental

The Accidental
Author: Ali Smith
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2007-04-10
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307279758

Filled with the bestselling, award-winning author's trademark wordplay and inventive storytelling, here is the dizzyingly entertaining, wickedly humorous story of a mysterious stranger whose sudden appearance during a family’s summer holiday transforms four variously unhappy people. Each of the Smarts—parents Eve and Michael, son Magnus, and the youngest, daughter Astrid—encounter Amber in his or her own solipsistic way, but somehow her presence allows them to see their lives (and their life together) in a new light. Smith’s narrative freedom and exhilarating facility with language propel the novel to its startling, wonderfully enigmatic conclusion.

Fat Girl on a Plane

Fat Girl on a Plane
Author: Kelly deVos
Publisher: Harlequin
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1488023492

“A savvy, smart, and funny book about embracing your body and taking control of your destiny.” —Kathleen Glasgow, author of the New York Times bestselling novel Girl in Pieces “Bold, unique, and completely original…A debut both spirited and inventive, much like its indomitable heroine.” —Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, author of Firsts From debut author Kelly DeVos comes an unforgettable story about fierce fashion, pursuing your dreams, and loving yourself at any size. FAT Cookie Vonn’s dreams include getting out of Phoenix and becoming the next great fashion designer. But in the world of fashion, being fat is a cardinal sin. It doesn’t help that she’s constantly compared to her supermodel mother—and named after a dessert. Cookie scores a trip to New York to pitch her design portfolio, but her plans are put on standby when she’s declared too fat to fly. When she finally arrives, she finds she’s been replaced by her ultrathin rival. Cookie vows to lose weight, get out of the friend zone with her crush, and put her dreams back on track. SKINNY Cookie expected sunshine and rainbows, but nothing about her new life is turning out like she planned. When the fashion designer of the moment offers her what she’s always wanted—an opportunity to live and study in New York—she finds herself in a world full of people more interested in putting women down than dressing them up. Her designs make waves, but her real dream of creating great clothes for people of all sizes seems to grow more distant by the day. Will she realize that she’s always had the power to make her own dreams come true? “A realistic portrayal of the frustrations of weight loss and size acceptance…sex, body positivity, and ambition. VERDICT A strong choice for most YA shelves.” —School Library Journal “Packed with smart zingers about what it feels like to be fat and have a body that people criticize…Also a fairytale romp through the New York City fashion world.” —Carolyn Mackler, B&N Teen Blog

Somebody with a Little Hammer

Somebody with a Little Hammer
Author: Mary Gaitskill
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2018-04-17
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0307472337

In essays on matters literary, social, cultural, and personal, Mary Gaitskill explores date rape and political adultery, the transcendentalism of the Talking Heads, the melancholy of Björk, and the playfulness of artist Laurel Nakadate. She celebrates the clownish grandiosity and the poetry of Norman Mailer’s long career and maps the sociosexual cataclysm embodied by porn star Linda Lovelace. Witty, wide-ranging, tender, and beautiful, Somebody with a Little Hammer displays the same heat-seeking, revelatory understanding for which Gaitskill’s writing has always been known.