Mary Gaitskill
Because They Wanted To: Stories.
Simon & Schuster, 1997. First printing. 0684808560 254 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 5.75" x 9", is bound in gilt-lettered dark blue paper spine and light brown paper-covered boards. Book and dust jacket are new. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"A man tells a story to a woman sitting beside him on a plane, little suspecting what it reveals about his capacity for cruelty and contempt. A callow runaway girl is stranded in a strange city with another woman’s fractiously needy children. An uncomprehending father helplessly lashes out at the daughter he both loves and resents. In these raw, startling, and incandescently lovely stories, the author of Veronica yields twelve indelible portraits of people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know. "Because They Wanted To" is further evidence that Gaitskill is one of the fiercest, funniest, and most subversively compassionate writers at work today."