I first read this one back in the nineties when Mary Gaitskill was a bright, shocking young thing and, perhaps unsurprisingly, what struck me most about it was these stories was the frankness with which they treated sex, the easy cruelty with which the characters treated each other, and the author's cool, ironic attitude toward these subjects. Re-reading them fifteen years later, other aspects of Gaitskill's work seem more prominent. Her writer's voice may seem somewhat detached, but Gaitskill's characters are capable of intense emotion and longing. Her characters may treat sex and relationships somewhat casually, but she describes their emotional states and deeply felt-emotions in preternatural detail. What many people consider to be "important relationship issues" are tossed off in a sentence or two, but the author's not afraid to linger for paragraphs on a telling personal detail or a meaningful anecdote. Gaitskill's the kind of writer who's willing to spend three sentences discussing the significance of a character's keychain or describing their crow's feet. I suppose that this may lose the sort reader who might pick this book up on the strength of its outré reputation, but although this may seem like fine work, Gaitskill is, at the same time, a remarkably economical writer. In these stories, every detail, every off-kilter feeling, and every social interaction counts. The woman knows how to construct a character.

Gaitskill's reputation as a writer who specializes in human cruelty is probably closer to the mark. There are a few happy endings here, but not many. In a sense, she's a writer that specializes in collision and impact, both emotional and sexual. It's not that her characters are dead to the world, although many of them certainly feel numbed, it's that their capacity to experience emotion tends mostly toward various flavors of pain and anguish. Emotionally, they exist mostly in terms of the negative. But that's different than being emotionally dead: raw and emotionally vulnerable, the events described here threaten to collapse the strategies they've painstakingly constructed to make it through their lives. When a bit of transcendence does creep in, it's hard earned and feels especially gratifying. This is especially true of the linked set of short stories that ends the book. After a typically chaotic series of events involving professional disappointment, miscommunication, awkward casual sexual encounters, and substance abuse, the story ends with four friends -- and apparently occasional lovers -- sitting together in a nighttime garden, in the dark but wonderfully conscious of each other's presence. The relief I felt upon reading this scene was enormous. Human connection in these stories is a rare, hard-won thing, but Gaitskill seems to be arguing that it might actually be worth the trouble, too. ( )

This is a terrific collection of longish short stories by a writer with a very keen eye for the human condition and ear for language. In every story, I feel like I met real people, people who are, usually, floundering their way through our modern maze of fragile relationships and unrealistic and so often disappointed expectations. There are occasions where Gaitskill is guilty of overwriting, as the metaphors fly fast and furious and make it hard to see the story for the imagery. But that's only now and then. Overall, these are wonderfully written, if frequently uncomfortable, stories. ( )

In short, a book about relationships and sex for grown-ups. Gaitskill’s characters occupy a mean, raw world; they are vulnerable, confused, and desperate, trying to find something (usually each other) to help them deal with a world that is threatening in its aggressive meaninglessness.

The characters in these stories are capable of breathless desire and genuineness, but also of heartless distance, banal cruelty or ugly, emotional viciousness. Plus there’s sex, lots of sex—treated completely unsentimentally and honestly; it’s complex, messy, often unsatisfying, and sometimes damaging.
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One of the most brutally (emphasis on that adjective) honest writers I have ever encountered, Gaitskill holds nothing back in this collection of short stories. Most of her writing concerns the everyday drama of human relationships; however, her characters are so vivid and actualized that you are forced to identify with them to the point of excruciating pain. This was the first work of Gaitskill's that I picked up, and quite honestly, her short stories easily outdo her novels, which are somewhat mediocre. ( )