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Pantheon
April 2009
On Sale: March 24, 2009
240 pages
ISBN: 0375424199
EAN: 9780375424199
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Following the extraordinary success of her novel Veronica, Mary Gaitskill returns with a luminous new collection of stories--her first in more than ten years. In βCollege Town l980,β young people adrift in Ann Arbor debate the meaning of personal strength at the start of the Reagan era; in the urban fairy tale βMirrorball,β a young man steals a girlβs soul during a one-night stand; in βThe Little Boy,β a woman haunted by the death of her former husband is finally able to grieve through a mysterious encounter with a needy child; and in βThe Arms and Legs of the Lake,β the fallout of the Iraq war becomes disturbingly real for the disparate passengers on a train going up the Hudson--three veterans, a liberal editor, a soldierβs uncle, and honeymooners on their way to Niagara Falls. Each story delivers the powerful, original language, and the dramatic engagement of the intelligent mind with the craving body--or of the intelligent body with the craving mind--that is characteristic of Gaitskillβs fiction. As intense as Bad Behavior, her first collection of stories, Donβt Cry reflects the profound enrichment of life experience. As the stories unfold against the backdrop of American life over the last thirty years, they describe how our social conscience has evolved while basic human truths-- βthe crude cinder blocks of male and female down in the basement, holding up the house,β as one character puts it-- remain unchanged.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - April 19, 2009
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