Bad Behavior: Mary Gaitskill (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Gaitskill, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241383102 ISBN 13: 9780241383100

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2019

Synopsis

Mary Gaitskill's tales of desire and dislocation in 1980s New York caused a sensation with their frank, caustic portrayals of men and women's inner lives. As her characters have sex, try and fail to connect, play power games and inflict myriad cruelties on each other, she skewers urban life with precision and candour.

'Stubbornly original, with a sort of rhythm and fine moments that flatten you out when you don't expect it, these stories are a pleasure to read' Alice Munro

'An air of Pinteresque menace hangs over these people's social exchanges like black funereal bunting ... Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail' Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

About this title

About the Author

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.

From the Back Cover

A young woman anxiously waits for her date on a street corner in New York City; he sits in a pizza parlour across the street, watching her discomfort. A middle-aged woman returns to a New York that is haunted by the passion and intensity of her former relationship with her estranged best friend. A secretarial graduate starts her first job at a lawyer's office and quietly keeps her cruel experiences at his hands locked inside herself. The stories in this collection peer deep into the inner lives of men and women, explore the cavernous spaces between what we say and what can be expressed, and are full of tenderness and cruelty. Published for the first time in Penguin Modern Classics, Bad Behaviour provides a devastatingly insightful and urgently necessary view of our times.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241383102
• ISBN 13: 9780241383100
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224