Because They Wanted To (Penguin Modern Classics)

Description: 'A perfectly formed set of stories about alienation in modern times' Independent 'Mesmerizing - almost ecstatic' The New York Times Mary Gaitskill's coolly compelling, quietly devastating stories explore the messy complexity of relationships between lovers, families and friends. An unsettling encounter on a plane; a tentative affair between an older woman and a younger man; the chasm between a father and his daughter: each expresses our longing for, and our fear of, human connection. Review: I really admire how Mary Gaitskill is willing to think about the problematic with complexity and humanity, and without taking sides or engaging in all the fashionable moral hectoring that passes for serious thought these days. -- Eimear McBride Gaitskill shares Edith Wharton's forensic awareness of what happens just beneath the surface of high-toned encounters in public places * Independent * Gaitskill's brand of brainy lyricism, of acid shot through with grace, is unlike anyone else's. And it constitutes some of the most incisive fiction writing around -- Meghan O'Rourke * New York Times Book Review * 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 Magazine * Author Biography: Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To (nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award), and Don't Cry, the novels The Mare, Veronica (nominated for the National Book Award), Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and a collection of essays, Somebody with A Little Hammer. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Artforum, and Granta, among many other journals, as well as in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Description: 'A perfectly formed set of stories about alienation in modern times' Independent 'Mesmerizing - almost ecstatic' The New York Times Mary Gaitskill's coolly compelling, quietly devastating stories explore the messy complexity of relationships between lovers, families and friends. An unsettling encounter on a plane; a tentative affair between an older woman and a younger man; the chasm between a father and his daughter: each expresses our longing for, and our fear of, human connection. Review: I really admire how Mary Gaitskill is willing to think about the problematic with complexity and humanity, and without taking sides or engaging in all the fashionable moral hectoring that passes for serious thought these days. -- Eimear McBride Gaitskill shares Edith Wharton's forensic awareness of what happens just beneath the surface of high-toned encounters in public places * Independent * Gaitskill's brand of brainy lyricism, of acid shot through with grace, is unlike anyone else's. And it constitutes some of the most incisive fiction writing around -- Meghan O'Rourke * New York Times Book Review * 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 Magazine * Author Biography: Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To (nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award), and Don't Cry, the novels The Mare, Veronica (nominated for the National Book Award), Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and a collection of essays, Somebody with A Little Hammer. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Artforum, and Granta, among many other journals, as well as in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories.