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3.5 AVERAGE
3.5 AVERAGE
Gaitskill's writing is luxuriously sloppy, and impossible to put down. Once again she investigates the world of sadomassochism, obsession, and the way damaged people can lose themselves in someone else (or the idea of someone else) to find themselves. Here she alternates from chapter to chapter between first-person narrated stories by the Fat Girl and third person narration by the Thin Girl, presumably to view different sides of each character. Unfortunately, both narrators sound somewhat alike. Still, a very interesting read and more philosophically ambitious, for my money, than Bad Behavior.
My god, I did NOT know what I had signed up for with this book. It seems to me this book is very oversexualised even when the author is talking about kids. I know that the point of this book is to show how people grow up to be the adults they are but my god, this is too much for me. Also the first and second part felt very disjointed to me and there was absolutely no way of distinguishing the two girls once we turned to the flashback scenes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Incest, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment
This is a deep exploration of two girls; Judith and Dorothy. It delves into their backgrounds and family histories, building up the past to present the present more fully.
Well-written and nuanced, but just not the type of book I love to read anymore.
Well-written and nuanced, but just not the type of book I love to read anymore.
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Incest, Mental illness, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Blood, Death of parent
I really appreciated how Gaitskill achieved something intellectual in this novel in an intensely visceral way. I can't think of another novel about ideas that also conveys emotion and character as well, and I think that mix further serves the ideas she's exploring.
The central conceit of the novel is that Justine Shade, a freelance journalist and part-time doctor's assistant (and the "thin girl" of the title), is doing a story on the influence of Anna Granite, an individualist philosopher closely modeled after Ayn Rand, as a platform to analyze and criticize a greedy, every-man-for-himself age (seemingly the Reaganite late 80s into the Bushy early 90s). A devotee of Granite, and former employee of hers, Dorothy Never (the "fat girl" of the title), reaches out to Shade in response to a laundromat posting that Shade made. Their meeting and discussion is the framing for the narrative, although the core is the middle section of alternating flashbacks to the two women's girlhoods.
Cruelty is the concern throughout, and Gaitskill spares few details and examples. It is, at times, a brutalizing read, especially as multiple shocking rapes are narrated with cool objectivity. Of course, "objectivity" is one of the principles of Anna Granite's philosophy, so a purpose can be discerned in describing these violences, even if they raise questions of gratuitousness. Dorothy Never, whose childhood story is the most traumatic of the two (ordinarily, it would be wrong to compare traumas, but the juxtaposed stories and voices of the two women seem to suggest comparisons, which would again seem symptomiatic of an individualist era, when everyone's in competition even in their traumas), pulls herself out of her dark mire through the books of Anna Granite, which depict a world where "ultrareality"--looking at the state of things as they really are--is a salve for the weakness of ideology and sympathy and all the things that make us defer to others instead of pursuing our self-interests and self-pleasure. "Ultrareality," then, seems to see the individual as the core unit of reality, the atom with which all good things are done, against the weakness of collectives that negate the individualistic power. What Gaitskill shows, in the stories of these girls, is how the individual can be impinged and can impinge on others in transformative, controlless ways. The Granite novels are a fantasy of self-reliance and self-interest underpinned by gripping romances. Desire is the grain that can undo ultrareality, the novel shows, and no one is immune, not even Anna Granite.
Somehow, the novel manages a tender ending, even though it feels a bit contrived. Throughout, the metaphors especially are stunning, although they read as sensual and not abstract, which seems appropriate for this almost-but-not-quite-allegory. I could think for days and days about the book and what it does, and likely might, and I enjoyed being propelled more by the thoughts it was conveying than a plotty narrative. For a novel that contains its own warnings about taking ideas and ways of thinking from a novel, I was nonetheless absorbed in Gaitskill's writing.
The central conceit of the novel is that Justine Shade, a freelance journalist and part-time doctor's assistant (and the "thin girl" of the title), is doing a story on the influence of Anna Granite, an individualist philosopher closely modeled after Ayn Rand, as a platform to analyze and criticize a greedy, every-man-for-himself age (seemingly the Reaganite late 80s into the Bushy early 90s). A devotee of Granite, and former employee of hers, Dorothy Never (the "fat girl" of the title), reaches out to Shade in response to a laundromat posting that Shade made. Their meeting and discussion is the framing for the narrative, although the core is the middle section of alternating flashbacks to the two women's girlhoods.
Cruelty is the concern throughout, and Gaitskill spares few details and examples. It is, at times, a brutalizing read, especially as multiple shocking rapes are narrated with cool objectivity. Of course, "objectivity" is one of the principles of Anna Granite's philosophy, so a purpose can be discerned in describing these violences, even if they raise questions of gratuitousness. Dorothy Never, whose childhood story is the most traumatic of the two (ordinarily, it would be wrong to compare traumas, but the juxtaposed stories and voices of the two women seem to suggest comparisons, which would again seem symptomiatic of an individualist era, when everyone's in competition even in their traumas), pulls herself out of her dark mire through the books of Anna Granite, which depict a world where "ultrareality"--looking at the state of things as they really are--is a salve for the weakness of ideology and sympathy and all the things that make us defer to others instead of pursuing our self-interests and self-pleasure. "Ultrareality," then, seems to see the individual as the core unit of reality, the atom with which all good things are done, against the weakness of collectives that negate the individualistic power. What Gaitskill shows, in the stories of these girls, is how the individual can be impinged and can impinge on others in transformative, controlless ways. The Granite novels are a fantasy of self-reliance and self-interest underpinned by gripping romances. Desire is the grain that can undo ultrareality, the novel shows, and no one is immune, not even Anna Granite.
Somehow, the novel manages a tender ending, even though it feels a bit contrived. Throughout, the metaphors especially are stunning, although they read as sensual and not abstract, which seems appropriate for this almost-but-not-quite-allegory. I could think for days and days about the book and what it does, and likely might, and I enjoyed being propelled more by the thoughts it was conveying than a plotty narrative. For a novel that contains its own warnings about taking ideas and ways of thinking from a novel, I was nonetheless absorbed in Gaitskill's writing.
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes