A review by emilylandry
Because They Wanted to by Mary Gaitskill

4.0

I've written before about the fact that Mary Gaitskill is one of my favorite authors. She still is, but this book of short stories is really intense. One review on the cover says that they are too rich for one sitting, but too compelling not to read in one sitting. I definitely agree. Gaitskill often writes about S/M, sexual abuse, people with intimacy issues, people suffering from illness, etc etc etc. In one novel, you will get a lot of in-depth investigation of any characters "issue," but you also get a lot more complexity outside of that. In a book of short stories, you just get a lot of perversion. I enjoyed how she would write sort of common narratives from the "other" point of view, but make them complex characters. The best part of the book was the short novella at the end about a poetry professor who goes through a trio of very different relationships in four parts.