Don't Cry

'An Old Virgin' describes a nurse's obsession with her forty-three-year-old patient's virginity; in the urban fable 'Mirrorball' a man steals a girl's soul during a one-night stand; 'College Town 1980' follows a group of listless young people adrift in Ann Arbor, debating the meaning of personal strength at the start of the Reagan era; 'Folk Song' opens with a list of newspaper headlines before dissecting the lives of the characters behind the features, including a murderer who gives a prime-time interview and a woman from San Francisco attempting to break a world record by having sex with one thousand men. Full of jagged, lived emotion, broken people and powerful, original writing, Don't Cry is a testament to Gaitskill's formal range and incomparable excavation of character.

About the Author :
Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To, and Don't Cry, and the novels Veronica and Two Girls Fat and Thin. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, and the O. Henry Prize Stories.

Review :
This new collection shows one of the great American writers continuing to evolve, proving that she can surprise as well as shock. Gaitskill's prose is conceptual, clean-limbed and immediate... The media still presents sex, despite progressive gestures, in such a limited, codified way that to read an author who takes it seriously, as one of the soul's deep concerns, is an experience to savour No writer understands and gratifies the voyeurism inherent in reading fiction better than Mary Gaitskill... Gaitskill writes with visceral power, with what sometimes feels like an exultantly destructive energy... They don't require suspense building toward a crisis and denouement, because they hold our attention with the promise of revealing what is ordinarily hidden from view. Hold it fiercely. Glimpses of what characters would forbid us to see are seductive, immediately involving. They insist we keep looking, just as we would at a car wreck; keep eavesdropping, as we would on a couple fighting next door; keep reading, as we would a diary left open by accident. The fierce artistry of Gaitskill's writing, its weirdly graceful introduction of the sublime into the sordid Gaitskill is good at the throb and pop of cities and populates her stories with startling ugly-beautiful sentences. Economical, intimate and unsparing, the story's control of perspective and acuity of insight give it the rich, satisfying feel of a novel. Each of the stories in Don't Cry ... makes for similarly hazardous reading, fractured with faultlines, traps for the unsteady reader ... in probing the unseemly, Gaitskill sees what others can't ... sentences throughout prickle with a similar tactile electricity, whether it's the soft glow of nostalgia ... brimming with this sensual and soothing disquiet, these stories are impossible to ignore. Compelling This new collection shows one of the great American writers continuing to evolve, proving that she can surprise as well as shock Praise for Mary Gaitskill: Gaitskill's work feels more real than real life and reading her leads to a place that feels like a sacred space. Both stripped-bare fragile and 'fuck you' tough. Gaitskill writes beautifully about the agonising emotions we often try to keep under wraps in real life. A sensitive, astute and uncompromising exploration of the beauty and ugliness of human relationships Gaitskill is a formidably gifted, astute writer. Praise for The Mare: Visceral and haunting, and the telling, with its shifting first person narrative, is nothing short of masterful. A thoroughly compelling read ... redemptive and moving, The Mare offers as much fresh air for the author (and the reader) as it does for her characters. Penetrating ... confronts, head-on, white privilege and black victimhood. Emotionally complex voices crafted with skill and sensitivity. The Mare is a dark, dreamlike novel, at times nightmarish, at others offering glimpses of the sublime, shocking in its raw depiction of violence, and beautiful in its evocation of flawed love. A devastatingly good novel a thrillingly talented writer Gaitskill is more than a gifted story-teller. She is an enchanter