Because They Wanted To

Mary Gaitskill

ISBN 10: 0684808560 / ISBN 13: 9780684808567

Published by Simon and Schuster, 1997

About this Item

Uncorrected Proof. Signed by the Author on the title page. Seller Inventory # 1164

Bibliographic Details

Title: Because They Wanted To

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Publication Date: 1997

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

An author of Two Girls, Fat and Thin shares a collection of stories about people who want badly but, at the same time, do not quite know what they want and whose wants conflict with their deeper needs and moral sense of the world. 17,500 first printing.

Review:

Reading a Mary Gaitskill short story is like getting into a no-holds-barred fight: mean, raw, and dangerous. She's fond of portraying characters who seem strangely comfortable living in emotional extremity. She never takes the safe route through a story; in fact, she'll choose the low road every time. The title story places a runaway girl in care of abandoned children. Where many writers would seek out some faint ray of redemption or hope, Gaitskill concentrates on the grime in the cracks of the linoleum. In "The Girl on the Plane," a bitter man confesses his participation in a brutal act to a stranger, but the confession brings no solace. These stories practically shake with tension. In the final long story of this collection, "The Wrong Thing," Gaitskill picks up the tale after the breaking point, as she gracefully illuminates the life of a woman piecing together the fragments of her sexual and emotional history. Because They Wanted not only fulfills the promise of her previous short-story collection Bad Behavior and the novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin, it takes us to a higher place.