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A review by bucket
Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill
4.0
This is a more expansive collection than Bad Behavior (published 20 years earlier), which mostly featured young women in personal and sexual turmoil. While the turmoil theme is still prominent here, there are plenty of other themes, the variety of characters (gender, age, sexual orientation) is quite wide, and the collection manages to tackle its themes from a variety of directions - in my opinion, this is the mark of a good collection of stories. Bad Behavior managed none of this, and it goes to show what a difference 20 years of experience can make.
What I love most about Gaitskill's writing is how very TRUE it feels. Her descriptions and situations are never idealized or glossy - everything is gritty and sharp and blatant, even when that means overtly sexual or disgusting or what many people would consider devient or perverted.
Of the 10 stories, I very much enjoyed 7 of them. Mirror Ball really spoke to me - I was fascinated by the way Gaitskill anthropomorphized the soul to explain what it's like to be utterly altered by someone you meet without understanding why or how it happened. The Arms and Legs of the Lake says so much about the cost of war to those who return. The final story, Don't Cry, juxtaposes different types of struggle - the struggle of war, the struggle of grief when you lose your spouse, and the struggle of trying to achieve something that seems impossible.
The choice of Don't Cry as the overall title of the collection was a good one. Each story very much speaks to the need for great inner strength. Only in Don't Cry, does a character break down, let go, and cry.
Themes: women, relationships, sex, turmoil, souls and soul-speak, writing, aging, grief, death (of a partner, in particular), inner strength
What I love most about Gaitskill's writing is how very TRUE it feels. Her descriptions and situations are never idealized or glossy - everything is gritty and sharp and blatant, even when that means overtly sexual or disgusting or what many people would consider devient or perverted.
Of the 10 stories, I very much enjoyed 7 of them. Mirror Ball really spoke to me - I was fascinated by the way Gaitskill anthropomorphized the soul to explain what it's like to be utterly altered by someone you meet without understanding why or how it happened. The Arms and Legs of the Lake says so much about the cost of war to those who return. The final story, Don't Cry, juxtaposes different types of struggle - the struggle of war, the struggle of grief when you lose your spouse, and the struggle of trying to achieve something that seems impossible.
The choice of Don't Cry as the overall title of the collection was a good one. Each story very much speaks to the need for great inner strength. Only in Don't Cry, does a character break down, let go, and cry.
Themes: women, relationships, sex, turmoil, souls and soul-speak, writing, aging, grief, death (of a partner, in particular), inner strength