claire_fuller_writer 's review for:

Two Girls, Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill

3.0

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This book was a bit too much of everything. Sometimes I really wanted to chuck it down (1 star), and I ended up skimming, and sometimes I was in awe of the writing, or at least how Gaitskill is able to get inside the heads of these women (not girls) (5 stars). It is her debut and a little flawed, but still worth reading and I would like to try more of her work but I probably need a little rest. Justine Shade (thin) interviews Dorothy Never (fat) for an article she's writing about novelist, cult-leader and philosopher, Anna Granite (a barely disguised Ayn Rand). They connect on some basic level and swap information about how they were abused in childhood. Gaitskill then takes us back in minute detail to the girls' earlier lives, and although I loved these sections, their lives began to blend with each other for me, so that I had to keep reminding myself who was who. I also just wasn't that interested in Granite / Rand. So, hmm, what should I try next by Gaitskill?