Veronica Paperback – Import, 8 November 2007

Arrived quickly, no damage - good condition. A steamy read!

This is a terrific book, though not for the easily offended (language, sex, drugs), or for people who are put off by ornate writing. However, if you like Mary Gaitskill, I think that this book is strictly speaking a better novel than Two Girls Fat and Thin (not to say that I didn't like that one, too). The character of Alison is so convincing ... there are so many people whose lives just seem to happen to them.

I eagerly ordered "Veronica" after reading "The Mare", which I adored. I was very disappointed. Gaitskill's overly stylized prose in "Veronica" is nauseatingly boring. Something kept me going to the last page, all the while hoping for an "aha" moment when this bizarre story would finally make sense. Unfortunately that moment never came. Avoid this book.

Allison, the narrator, looks back at the 80s, at herself and her friend Veronica, with a jaded, but precise and merciless eye. Allison herself is barely a survivor of her youthful enthusiasms. Gaitskill really captures the sense of excess, the drugs and sex. Reviewers who have complained about the characters are reacting to the fact that these are not warm, fuzzy people. They're damaged, neurotic, self-destructive -- the people you might wish to avoid in life, or like from a distance, but it's a pleasure to read about them. Gaitskill does a terrific job of characterization, and it's the arc of character, not of story that makes this book.

I purchased the book after reading first, "The Other Place," in a textbook collection of short stories, and then "Bad Behavior," Gaitskill's first collection. Mary Gaitskill is definitely one of my favorite writers.