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

Maryland

Signed. First edition, Poseidon Press, 1991. Dust jacket wrapped in protective vellum (removable). Excellent vintage copy. See photos for details. 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Minnesota

Reissued to coincide with the paperback publication of "Because They Wanted To", this captivating novel shimmers with dark intensity and wicked wit. In a stunning synthesis of eroticism, rage, pathos, and humor, Gaitskill's "fine storyteller's pace and brilliant metaphors" ("The New York Times Book Review") create a haunting and unforgettable journey into the dark side of contemporary life and the deepest recesses of the soul. 336 pp. National print ads & publicity. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

SIGNED FIRST EDITION Two Girls, Fat and Thin

cde89eec-1af9-4ac4-a337-57c6fb67328d-1

Like-new copy with a little very light edge wear, as pictured.

🌟 BONUS: Use my code STARINTHEMARGIN at checkout for $5 off your first Pango purchase of $10 or more!🌟

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Vermont

The friendship between Alison, a young woman struggling with her ruined career as a fashion model, and Veronica, an older eccentric and proofreader, survives Alison's return to the world of fashion and Veronica's battle with AIDS.

Veronica

600b36fd-16d5-449e-ac73-3d972cf84d9f-1

Charles. Dickens

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

California

One of Charles Dickens’s most critically admired novels, this story of a monumental and life-consuming court case features one of his most vast and varied casts of colorful characters. InBleak House,competing claims of love and inheritance—complicated by murder—have given rise to a costly and decades-long legal battle that one litigant refers to as “the family curse.” The insidious London fog that rises from the river Thames and seeps into the very bones of the characters symbolizes the pervasive corruption of the legal system and the society that supports it, targets of Dickens’s satirical wrath. Displaying Dickens’s familiar panoramic sweep and brilliant characters—including the mysterious orphan Esther Summerson, her gentle guardian John Jarndyce, the haughty Lady Dedlock, and the scheming lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn—the novel is also a bold experimental narrative that unforgettably dramatizes our most basic human conflicts.

Bleak House

4ac5c2a3-c156-405f-8338-9598a1237ec9-1

Nice copy with some very light edge wear. 🌟 BONUS: Use my code STAR at checkout for $5 off your first Pango purchase of $10 or more!🌟

Hanan al-Shaykh

A Retelling

Passed down over centuries from India, Persia, and across the Arab world, the mesmerizing stories of One Thousand and One Nights are related by the beautiful, young Shahrazad as she attempts to delay her execution. Retold in modern English by the acclaimed Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh, here are stories of the real and the supernatural, love and marriage, power and punishment, wealth and poverty, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. Bringing together nineteen classic tales, in these pages al-Shaykh weaves an utterly intoxicating collection, rich with humor, violence, and romance.

One Thousand and One Nights

79627be9-69fd-46e2-a68e-d473a63399ef-1

Virginia

Stories

Following the extraordinary success of her novel "Veronica," Gaitskill returns with a luminous new collection of stories--her first in more than 10 years.

Don't Cry

c6b6ff29-f044-4e6b-82a3-bb17e603ffa7-1

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

New York

A Novel

From the author of the National Book Award–nominated Veronica: Mary Gaitskill's most poignant and powerful work yet—the story of a Dominican girl, the white woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for her Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist on the fringe of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Paul, an academic who wonders what it will mean to “make a difference” in such a contrived situation. The Mare illuminates the couple's changing relationship with Velvet over the course of several years, as well as Velvet's powerful encounter with the horses at the stable down the road, as Gaitskill weaves together Velvet's vital inner-city community and the privileged country world of Ginger and Paul. The timeless story of a girl and a horse is joined with the timeless story of people from different races and socioeconomic backgrounds trying to meet one another honestly in a novel that is raw, striking, and completely original.

The Mare

2f0324c7-50a5-43f6-a2a7-80e36e3fd830

Florida

A Huffington Post 2015 Fall Can't-Miss New ReadA Kirkus Reviews Fall Must ReadAn Entertainment Weekly Blockbuster Novel of Fall 2015In National Book Award-finalist Mary Gaitskill's most poignant and powerful work yet, the timeless story of a girl and a horse is joined with a timely story of people from different races and classes trying to meet one another honestly. The result is raw, heart-stirring, and original.

Ex library book
No tears folds creases stains or writing 
First edition 

New Jersey

The extraordinary new novel from the acclaimed author ofBad BehaviorandTwo Girls, Fat and Thin,Veronicais about flesh and spirit, vanity, mortality, and mortal affection. Set mostly in Paris and Manhattan in the desperately glittering 1980s, it has the timeless depth and moral power of a fairy tale. As a teenager on the streets of San Francisco, Alison is discovered by a photographer and swept into the world of fashion-modeling in Paris and Rome. When her career crashes and a love affair ends disastrously, she moves to New York City to build a new life. There she meets Veronica—an older wisecracking eccentric with her own ideas about style, a proofreader who comes to work with a personal “office kit” and a plaque that reads “Still Anal After All These Years.” Improbably, the two women become friends. Their friendship will survive not only Alison’s reentry into the seductive nocturnal realm of fashion, but also Veronica’s terrible descent into the then-uncharted realm of AIDS. The memory of their friendship will continue to haunt Alison years later, when she, too, is aging and ill and is questioning the meaning of what she experienced and who she became during that time. Masterfully layering time and space, thought and sensation, Mary Gaitskill dazzles the reader with psychological insight and a mystical sense of the soul’s hurtling passage through the world. A novel unlike any other,Veronicais a tour de force about the fragility and mystery of human relationships, the failure of love, and love’s abiding power. It shines on every page with depth of feeling and formal beauty.

Massachusetts

Oregon

Texas

"Gaitskill's complex, urgent characters struggle with the disparity between what they want and what they know. Longing for emotional connection, they often mistake debasement for passion, manipulation for affection, cruelty for intensity. In "Tiny, Smiling Daddy," a father suffers his ambivalent love for a daughter who has betrayed him - perhaps justly. In "The Girl on the Plane," a disillusioned salesman must face his participation in a brutal act he has almost forgotten. In "Kiss and Tell," a writer seeks revenge on a woman who rejected him, only to find that once he has achieved it, he no longer wants it. In "The Wrong Thing," a lonely, emotionally injured woman involved in a set of skewed, apparently trivial sexual encounters unexpectedly discovers her own life-giving reserve of humility, gentleness, and compassion."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Because They Wanted To

633ffec2-c3ab-44b8-9117-57208e627c1d-1

One of the Best Books of the Year
The New York Times * The Washington Post * NPR * San Francisco Chronicle * Vanity Fair * Milwaukee Journal Sentinel * Kansas City Star

When Velveteen Vargas, an eleven-year-old Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn, comes to stay with a family in upstate New York, what begins as a two-week visit blossoms into something much more significant. Soon Velvet finds herself torn between her host family--Ginger, a failed artist and shakily recovered alcoholic; and Paul, a college professor--and her own deeply tormented mother. The one constant becomes Velvet's newly discovered passion for horse riding--and especially for an abused, unruly mare named Fugly Girl. A stirring and deeply felt novel, The Mare is Mary Gaitskill's most poignant and powerful work yet--a stunning exploration of a girl and her horse, and of the way we connect with people from all walks of life.

Browse by categories

Save this search

Mary Gaitskill

This Is Pleasure

Mary Gaitskill

This Is Pleasure

Mary Gaitskill

SIGNED FIRST EDITION Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Mary Gaitskill

Veronica

Charles. Dickens; Mary Gaitskill

Bleak House

Mary Gaitskill

Veronica

Mary Gaitskill

Veronica

Mary Gaitskill

Veronica

Hanan al-Shaykh; Mary Gaitskill

One Thousand and One Nights

Mary Gaitskill

Veronica

Mary Gaitskill

Don't Cry

Mary Gaitskill

The Mare

Mary Gaitskill

The Mare

Mary Gaitskill

The Mare

Mary Gaitskill

Veronica

Mary Gaitskill

Veronica

Mary Gaitskill

The Mare

Mary Gaitskill

Because They Wanted To

Mary Gaitskill

Veronica

Mary Gaitskill

The Mare