Mary Gaitskill

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Alabama

A Story

Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident.
 
The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin's friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin's and Margot's voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons--hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable.
 
Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters--and to her readers--is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don't always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.

This Is Pleasure

e7326ff6-c249-4829-a9b0-285f806d5420-1

A Guardian Book of the Year A Guardian Writers' Choice Book of the Year'Gets deep under your skin ... Gaitskill is uniquely attuned to the moment.' Sunday Times'Gaitskill achieves a superb feat. She distils the suffering, anger, reactivity, danger and social recalibration of the #MeToo movement into an extremely potent, intelligent and nuanced account. Sarah Hall, Guardian'The work of an expert iconoclast elegantly prising the lid from a can of worms.' Metro'I don't know why I behaved the way I did, and I kept doing it; he kept doing it. And though I might once have easily brushed it away, suddenly I could not. Nor could I confront him. The conversation moved too quickly.'This is Pleasure is an extraordinary work by one of the world's finest writers, and achieves more in 15,000 words than most full-length novels. Following the unravelling of the life of a male publisher undone by allegations of sexual impropriety and harassment, and the female friend who tries to understand, and explain, his actions, it looks unflinchingly at our present moment and rejects moral certainties to show us that there are many sides to every story. Mary Gaitskill has spent her whole career mining the complexity of human relationships on both an individual and societal scale with wisdom and grace. Here her insights are more piercing and timely than ever.

Category - Fiction / Young Adult

Format - Hardcover

Condition - New

Listed - A month ago

Ships From - Alabama

Est. Publication Date - Nov 2019

Additional Information

This Is Pleasure: A Story

ISBN: 9781524749132

Publisher Description

Tags

This Is Pleasure

By:

$5.00

Meet the seller

Discover more

This Is Pleasure

By: Mary Gaitskill

More from this seller

Additional titles by Mary Gaitskill

'This Is Pleasure' readers also enjoyed:

Recently Viewed

Browse by categories

Category - Fiction / Young Adult

Format - Hardcover

Condition - New

Listed - A month ago

Ships From - Alabama

Est. Publication Date - Nov 2019

Additional Information

This Is Pleasure: A Story

ISBN: 9781524749132

Publisher Description

Tags

This Is Pleasure

By:

$5.00

Meet the seller

Discover more

This Is Pleasure

By: Mary Gaitskill

More from this seller

Additional titles by Mary Gaitskill

'This Is Pleasure' readers also enjoyed:

Recently Viewed