Because They Wanted To

I really admire how Mary Gaitskill is willing to think about the problematic with complexity and humanity, and without taking sides or engaging in all the fashionable moral hectoring that passes for serious thought these days.

Eimear McBride

Gaitskill shares Edith Wharton's forensic awareness of what happens just beneath the surface of high-toned encounters in public places

Independent

Gaitskill's brand of brainy lyricism, of acid shot through with grace, is unlike anyone else's. And it constitutes some of the most incisive fiction writing around

Meghan O'Rourke, New York Times Book Review