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Two Girls, Fat and Thin
Justine, a beautiful, lonely, sexually addicted young woman, meets Dorothy, fat, maladjusted, and unhappy since childhood. They are superficially a study in contrasts yet share equally haunting sexual burdens carried since youth. With common secrets, they are drawn into a remarkable friendship.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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4436 people want to read
About the author
Mary Gaitskill
70 books1,496 followersMary Gaitskill is an American author of essays, short stories and novels. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993 and 2006), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). She married writer Peter Trachtenberg in 2001. As of 2005, she lived in New York City; Gaitskill has previously lived in Toronto, San Francisco, and Marin County, CA, as well as attending the University of Michigan where she earned her B.A. and won a Hopwood Award. Gaitskill has recounted (in her essay "Revelation") becoming a born-again Christian at age 21 but lapsing after six months.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 278 reviews
November 3, 2009
I love Mary Gaitskill. This is her first novel. This book is structurally flawed, but I think the flaw is due to her focus and the material and probably unavoidable. (Her second novel, Veronica, is a diamond.) The prose is flawless. Her observations are incisive, honest, vicious, hilarious, and penetrating. And oddly comforting. I have read this book at least four or five times and don't doubt that I'll read it again.
I dock a star not so much for the aforementioned structural problems but because the story contains an extremely over-caricatured Ayn Rand. The novel would have been stronger had she rendered Rand with more subtlety. Rand's biography is bizarre, contradictory and fantastical, but here she is little more than a cartoon character. She is a cardboard stage prop for the more fully rendered characters to bat about. I think Gaitskill missed an opportunity to do something more complex with Rand in her fiction. But I imagine it could be argued that Justine's magazine article is a kind of meta-reference to Gaitskill's own treatment of Rand. Or that Gaitskill's rendition is reflective of the way Rand glossed over the edges of her rather 2D characters in her books. So who knows.
I dock a star not so much for the aforementioned structural problems but because the story contains an extremely over-caricatured Ayn Rand. The novel would have been stronger had she rendered Rand with more subtlety. Rand's biography is bizarre, contradictory and fantastical, but here she is little more than a cartoon character. She is a cardboard stage prop for the more fully rendered characters to bat about. I think Gaitskill missed an opportunity to do something more complex with Rand in her fiction. But I imagine it could be argued that Justine's magazine article is a kind of meta-reference to Gaitskill's own treatment of Rand. Or that Gaitskill's rendition is reflective of the way Rand glossed over the edges of her rather 2D characters in her books. So who knows.
September 18, 2017
Mary Gaitskill's first novel centres on the meeting and subsequent unconventional friendship between 'two girls' (women, but I'll let that pass because a large chunk of the book is about their experiences of growing up) – Dorothy Never ('fat') and Justine Shade ('thin'). Justine is a part-time journalist who places an ad looking for devotees of the novelist Anna Granite and her philosophy of Definitism – very thinly veiled stand-ins for Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Dorothy, who was not only an acolyte of Granite but also worked for her, replies. The women have superficial differences (I presume these are the reason for the title, as Dorothy's fatness and Justine's thinness are not really relevant to the plot) but both sense much deeper things in common, establishing a sort of psychic bond that leads them to confide in each other about their shared experience of childhood sexual abuse. Gaitskill then rewinds and tells, in alternate chapters, the story of each character's awful coming-of-age before returning to the present, where we see how these events have broken our (by now much more sympathetic) antiheroines. Dorothy idolises the memory of her only lover, a married man, and exists in a state of isolation, splendid or tragic depending on how you see it. Justine repeats a pattern of degrading sexual encounters and becomes involved in an exploitative sadomasochistic relationship with a strangely impish man she meets in a bar. These seemingly disparate paths conspire to pull Dorothy and Justine together again, culminating in a symbolic climax that consolidates the odd connection between the two.
As a whole this is not perfect; there's something slightly too 'zany' about it, an offputting quality I find in a lot of 90s fiction. Yet there are parts of it I'll be thinking about for a long while – some pages so startling in the singularity of their insights that I felt physically jolted – and Dorothy is one of the best fictional characters I've come across in recent times. Also, this book did more than anything else to make me want to read Rand, which was probably not Gaitskill's intention but is an interesting side effect; the experiences Dorothy has as a result of her encounters with Granite's work are just too powerful to be undermined by the scenario's satirical nature.
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As a whole this is not perfect; there's something slightly too 'zany' about it, an offputting quality I find in a lot of 90s fiction. Yet there are parts of it I'll be thinking about for a long while – some pages so startling in the singularity of their insights that I felt physically jolted – and Dorothy is one of the best fictional characters I've come across in recent times. Also, this book did more than anything else to make me want to read Rand, which was probably not Gaitskill's intention but is an interesting side effect; the experiences Dorothy has as a result of her encounters with Granite's work are just too powerful to be undermined by the scenario's satirical nature.
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May 3, 2007
Mary Gaitskill is one of my favorite authors. Her stories and novels are frightening, dark, and revealing. Her characters are often cruel, scared, ugly, and in pain. But they also seem familiar somehow, and sympathetic even when they should be unlikeable. Gaitskill's "girls" in this novel are developed through vignettes about their childhoods interspersed with present interactions between themselves and with others. I love this book especially for its satire of Ayn Rand (Anna Granite) and Objectivism (Definitism); Justine, a Manhattan journalist, and Dorothy, a former follower of Definitism, meet when Justine begins working on a research article on the movement. Like other Gaitskill characters, the tenuous relationship between Justine and Dorothy, both of whom seem to clearly self-identify as straight, has queer overtones. One review states that this book shows, once again, "how family fucks you up." Beyond that, I think this book is about how adults (from fucked up families or not) can become so isolated and the ways that they try to compensate for scarce emotional connections.
April 27, 2022
This book was a bit too much of everything. Sometimes I really wanted to chuck it down (1 star), and I ended up skimming, and sometimes I was in awe of the writing, or at least how Gaitskill is able to get inside the heads of these women (not girls) (5 stars). It is her debut and a little flawed, but still worth reading and I would like to try more of her work but I probably need a little rest. Justine Shade (thin) interviews Dorothy Never (fat) for an article she's writing about novelist, cult-leader and philosopher, Anna Granite (a barely disguised Ayn Rand). They connect on some basic level and swap information about how they were abused in childhood. Gaitskill then takes us back in minute detail to the girls' earlier lives, and although I loved these sections, their lives began to blend with each other for me, so that I had to keep reminding myself who was who. I also just wasn't that interested in Granite / Rand. So, hmm, what should I try next by Gaitskill?
April 13, 2015
I had some fixed ideas about what this book would be about when I started it. I thought it would be about Ayn Rand, and I thought it would be about sexual abuse. And I guess it sort of is, but I think that these descriptions do not do it justice.
In fact, what it seems to me the novel is really about is cruelty. Cruelty and weakness. Cruelty and weakness as they are somehow inscribed into the very fabric of society, of school, of families, of sex, of children. Of course, Ayn Rand is about that too, but I don't know that the point of this book is so much to satirize her, as it is to explain why people would come to be fascinated with her, even worshipful. There may not be a lot of empathy toward Rand, but there is a great deal of empathy towards those who read her, and the idea of "satire" does not really capture that expansive work.
Likewise, with sexual abuse, it is certainly a feature of the experience of the two girls of the title, but it is inscribed within so many other kinds of cruelty and neglect and systematic suffering that saying the book is about sexual abuse seems to me to somehow miss the point. It's about abuse, some of which is sexual in nature, and which is pervasive and all-encompassing and inescapable.
This is my second Gaitskill, and I wonder why she does not have a larger place in our conversations about literature. Reading her is not really comfortable, and I don't think everyone will like her, but what she writes seems to me to stand on its own, and to fill a space of things we don't necessarily talk much about. Perhaps the problem is with my own reading, rather than the larger conversation, I don't know.
In fact, what it seems to me the novel is really about is cruelty. Cruelty and weakness. Cruelty and weakness as they are somehow inscribed into the very fabric of society, of school, of families, of sex, of children. Of course, Ayn Rand is about that too, but I don't know that the point of this book is so much to satirize her, as it is to explain why people would come to be fascinated with her, even worshipful. There may not be a lot of empathy toward Rand, but there is a great deal of empathy towards those who read her, and the idea of "satire" does not really capture that expansive work.
Likewise, with sexual abuse, it is certainly a feature of the experience of the two girls of the title, but it is inscribed within so many other kinds of cruelty and neglect and systematic suffering that saying the book is about sexual abuse seems to me to somehow miss the point. It's about abuse, some of which is sexual in nature, and which is pervasive and all-encompassing and inescapable.
This is my second Gaitskill, and I wonder why she does not have a larger place in our conversations about literature. Reading her is not really comfortable, and I don't think everyone will like her, but what she writes seems to me to stand on its own, and to fill a space of things we don't necessarily talk much about. Perhaps the problem is with my own reading, rather than the larger conversation, I don't know.
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February 23, 2017This book punches you repeatedly in the solar plexus with the full force of human horribleness. It's also about sympathy, connection, and understanding.
January 14, 2024
the most upsetting book i've read in a while, though it was gaitskill so obviously it was beautifully written. also could not stop thinking about how much i cried trying to read berlant's chapter about this book for my thesis summer of 2021 (edit: to clarify not bc the chapter was troubling just that berlant can be so hard to read lol) but im glad i finally got to the novel now because it is truly unlike anything i've ever read. but also im being so serious when i say this is upsetting
— "But I believed that under the destroyed integrity, the broken bones and humiliated character, the ghost of love flitted amid the ruins, moving from broken pillar to broken pillar, hiding behind a pile of rubble. On some deep, unfathomable level, where the pressure would burst human lungs and flatten three-dimensional bodies, where life took the form of eyeless, headless creatures with wobbling tentacles and undulating hammerlike tails, their love survived, faithful, luminous, and totally useless.
My ear stung. Someone had shot a rubber band at me."
— "But I believed that under the destroyed integrity, the broken bones and humiliated character, the ghost of love flitted amid the ruins, moving from broken pillar to broken pillar, hiding behind a pile of rubble. On some deep, unfathomable level, where the pressure would burst human lungs and flatten three-dimensional bodies, where life took the form of eyeless, headless creatures with wobbling tentacles and undulating hammerlike tails, their love survived, faithful, luminous, and totally useless.
My ear stung. Someone had shot a rubber band at me."
April 3, 2020
A peculiar novel.
I feel so defensive about liking Mary Gaitskill.
I feel so defensive about liking Mary Gaitskill.
September 16, 2025
Gaitskill has very quickly become a favourite of mine. This is an imperfect book; the dual structure is a little clunky, I’m not sure ‘voice’ of each character is really different enough, and there is something a little too ‘kooky’ in its depiction of Ayn Rand. That much is true, but I was still just completely enamoured with it. Gaitskill depicts our emotional world so vividly. There is a psychedelic, free-associative quality to the inner life of her characters that strikes me as fundamentally true to life; feelings take on a physical, animal quality, barely comprehended by the very people who experience them. This also contains a viscerally powerful, unflinchingly sentimental ending.
June 21, 2009
i turned to this in order to escape from Blood Meridian (which i hate a lot and think i might not finish at all), and at first it was refreshing to encounter female characters with interiority and subjective emotions, etc. for some reason, father-daughter sexual abuse is more palatable to me than diseased horses with swollen heads and drunk white dudes who kill random mexicans for no reason.
i read this quickly and remained fully engaged even on crowded subway rides. but in retrospect, i am not sure this novel is entirely successful. the structural device (switching between 1st and 3rd person narrators) never made sense to me and i kept waiting for it to do so. it wouldn't be so bothersome if it were merely an aesthetic flourish, but the entire project of this book seems to be to draw connections between these two different characters, which begs too many questions regarding justine's lack of narrative voice. moreover, the execution seems flawed, since the narrative VOICE remains absolutely the same even when the narrator AND the point-of-view change. how does that make sense? is the omniscient narrator actually dorothy? is justine invented by dorothy? is dorothy's subjective voice being written by justine? none of those options would feel satisfying, but what's worse is there is no answer to the conundrum.
at times, the writing is eh. adverby. but the nuances of complex emotion are made palpable by gaitskill's observations and depicted with killer accuracy. at least, they ring true for me and what i know about female psychology regarding self-worth, sexuality, identity, intimacy, and survival instinct. justine's adolescent cruelty. dorothy's ability to insulate herself from external reality. these are profound constructs.
i just don't know how soon i'll be ready to read another gaitskill. highly recommended for lovers of melodrama, since this is definitely a step-up from v.c. andrews.
i read this quickly and remained fully engaged even on crowded subway rides. but in retrospect, i am not sure this novel is entirely successful. the structural device (switching between 1st and 3rd person narrators) never made sense to me and i kept waiting for it to do so. it wouldn't be so bothersome if it were merely an aesthetic flourish, but the entire project of this book seems to be to draw connections between these two different characters, which begs too many questions regarding justine's lack of narrative voice. moreover, the execution seems flawed, since the narrative VOICE remains absolutely the same even when the narrator AND the point-of-view change. how does that make sense? is the omniscient narrator actually dorothy? is justine invented by dorothy? is dorothy's subjective voice being written by justine? none of those options would feel satisfying, but what's worse is there is no answer to the conundrum.
at times, the writing is eh. adverby. but the nuances of complex emotion are made palpable by gaitskill's observations and depicted with killer accuracy. at least, they ring true for me and what i know about female psychology regarding self-worth, sexuality, identity, intimacy, and survival instinct. justine's adolescent cruelty. dorothy's ability to insulate herself from external reality. these are profound constructs.
i just don't know how soon i'll be ready to read another gaitskill. highly recommended for lovers of melodrama, since this is definitely a step-up from v.c. andrews.
July 12, 2025
This is a difficult book to read because it's so relentlessly sad and grim. Dorothy and Justine, the "two girls" of the title, meet because Justine is writing an article about Dorothy's former mentor, the author Anna Granite. Anna Granite is the founder of a branch of philosophy that centres around individualism and distrust of the State. When they meet, Dorothy and Justine see in the other things that they hate and fear. Dorothy sees Justine as shallow, conceited, and a too concerned with following societal rules. Justine is horrified by Dorothy's weight and her excentricity. But Dorothy and Justine are both the product of the rigidly patriarchal society of the US in the 60s and 70s, and have experienced abuse and sexual trauma. They both see the other person as someone they could become, or as a part of themselves that they hate. Peace, if any peace can be found, is in embracing their other self, and seeing her with compassion.
Two Girls, Fat and Thin is a sophisticated and complex novel, albeit let down by some inconsistent editing, and a clumsy plot structure. Nevertheless, it is engaging and challenging, and made me want to seek out more work by Mary Gaitskill.
Two Girls, Fat and Thin is a sophisticated and complex novel, albeit let down by some inconsistent editing, and a clumsy plot structure. Nevertheless, it is engaging and challenging, and made me want to seek out more work by Mary Gaitskill.
May 2, 2018
I liked this intimate look at two women, both ill-at-ease in the world, who make a strange connection. We get very close to them from childhood on, and their encounters with each other vibrate with their past experiences. Dorothy was an abused child, while Justine was both abused and an abuser, but one whose flashes of empathy leave her open to redemption.
The story takes off after Justine, a freelance journalist/secretary, contacts Dorothy for an interview about "Definitism," the philosophy of Anna Granite, a stand-in for Ayn Rand. Dorothy is an obese 20-something and follower of Granite’s philosophy, while Justine is an alienated character with an interest in degrading and dangerous sex.
Justine’s article, published near the end of the book, enrages Dorothy, who decides immediately upon reading it to track Justine down and vent her anger. The ending was a surprise to me.
I admit I didn't get off to a good start with the book. I thought I'd be modifier'd out by page 12 or so, but the feeling abated as the story developed.
The story takes off after Justine, a freelance journalist/secretary, contacts Dorothy for an interview about "Definitism," the philosophy of Anna Granite, a stand-in for Ayn Rand. Dorothy is an obese 20-something and follower of Granite’s philosophy, while Justine is an alienated character with an interest in degrading and dangerous sex.
Justine’s article, published near the end of the book, enrages Dorothy, who decides immediately upon reading it to track Justine down and vent her anger. The ending was a surprise to me.
I admit I didn't get off to a good start with the book. I thought I'd be modifier'd out by page 12 or so, but the feeling abated as the story developed.
March 20, 2009
Just finished this today, and was sad to let these two characters go. This is a traumatising book about two traumatised women, and it has no real resolution, like life itself. The book is fundamentally about people who fail to connect with anyone in their lives, despite being sensitive, intelligent, and monumentally lonely.
I am irritated by the cover blurb that calls the book "darkly erotic." I guess any time a woman writes about sex in an open, noneuphmetistic manner, that's "erotic." Clearly, none of the sex in this book is meant to titillate, and it irks me that the publisher felt the need to sensationalize the contents of the book falsely. It was cheap and degrading, much as the women in the novel are degraded based on their sex.
I am irritated by the cover blurb that calls the book "darkly erotic." I guess any time a woman writes about sex in an open, noneuphmetistic manner, that's "erotic." Clearly, none of the sex in this book is meant to titillate, and it irks me that the publisher felt the need to sensationalize the contents of the book falsely. It was cheap and degrading, much as the women in the novel are degraded based on their sex.
March 11, 2024
whole book raw, precious, serious and shot through with brutal feeling. prose sometimes cutting and precise and sometimes lush, dizzying. very affecting. made me want to read more by/about ayn rand. gaitskill definitely now one of my favorite writers.
July 30, 2024
I found this book while looking through my mothers shelf one afternoon. She reads a wide variety of books, but because of a juvenile holdover I had relegated all of her books into the “mom” category. There are history books, novels, political theory, many of my books she has stolen (and rarely if ever read, though to be fair neither have I), and a revolving door of popular fiction marketed as “southern gothic”, etc.
When I picked up this book I looked at the title and thought: surely this is a girly book, about women, and I will find it boring. This is “chick-lit”, not real literature. And even though I haven’t knowingly read any “chick-lit” everything in that category is rubbish, and a waste of my time. I have enjoyed female authors like Carol Dweck and Kate Murphy, but their subject matter is praxis, practical matters. I find their advice extremely useful, and talk about and recommend their books. But I haven’t read really any fiction by a female author I truly enjoyed.
So when I picked up this book and started reading with that prejudice in mind, I was fully expecting to give up out of boredom. If I did finish this book, I would do so hastily only to say I had read Mary Gaitskills work and could confirm it was garbage. I picked up the book out of boredom and sat down in a warm sunny spot and started reading. I could hardly tear myself away from her book and quickly became obsessed.
In part 1 the two women are introduced. The fat one is a former member of a fictitious version of Ayn Rands inner circle and the thin one is an amateur journalist writing a hit piece about her ideology. After their rather short interview ends the real story begins. In part 2 she takes you back through their life histories, adolescent development, relationships, pivotal life events, etc. The quality of her writing is superb. Her descriptions, metaphors and characterizations communicate the intimate internal workings of these young women, the hostile environments of their youth, deranged upbringings, their experiences and the conflicting feelings they have. Easily some of the best writing I have encountered in years. It is especially impressive because this was her first published novel. She seems like an incredibly talented writer.
I am not really familiar with Ayn Rands philosophy. I have read one of her books and wasn’t impressed. The number of idiots complaining about her work and the numerically inferior, timid followers she has attracted turned me off from ever reading or taking her ideas seriously years ago. However the vigor, energy and confidence of the fat woman, the supposed embodiment of Ayn Rands philosophy in this story, has made me reconsider. She starts out as a timid abused girl. Her father begins to rape her in her adolescence. While her peers are talking about the boys they have a crush on in school, and who they want to sleep with, she goes home every night, broken, knowing her father will rape her. While her peers are having sex with young men their age, she is having sex, being raped by, her father. On top of this she is fat and no one likes her or wants to give her a chance. She overcomes these circumstances, she cuts her parents out of her life, she finds a sense of identity, she meets her idol Anna Granite (a fictitious version of Ayn Rand), and works for her and becomes a key member of her group.
The thin girl on the other hand is a bit of an evil bitch. She is also abused by an older man when she is very young, then goes on to abuse others. She lives a confusing life, trying to reconcile her conflicting desire for love, sexual excitement from sadism/masochism and the trauma of her early childhood. Throughout the story she lets men abuse her and treat her like shit. A few times I had to put the book down and stop reading. Some very sickening things. Maybe I am less sophisticated and need to be educated in the ways of beating women for sexual pleasure. I am not trying to be patronizing, maybe the sadists have a point, maybe some light spanking, but reading about torturing someone makes my skin crawl. It makes me feel awful that this is how this woman is dealing with her trauma, and that it has effectively cut her off from having a loving relationship with someone that cares about her because it will never be as intense as a stranger choking her unconscious.
Both of the characters are basically well read geniuses, so the dialogue between them, with other characters and their inner monologues are so interesting and insightful its hard not to like them and the book generally. I won’t spoil the ending just in case you do read this novel, though I doubt you’ll be able to find a physical copy and after a cursory glance online it may be difficult to find a digital version as well.
Goodreads has an internal rating system I abide by. If you hover over 4 stars in the browser version of Goodreads with a mouse you’ll see it says “really like it” vs 5 stars which says “I loved it”. I found a lot of the ideas and opinions of the author annoying though I think she approached the inherently unlikable fat woman with so much empathy and love, and didn’t demonize Ayn Rands philosophy in some annoying predictable way so she deserves a lot of credit for that. The story doesn’t have some great cosmic triumphal ending, something I could buy into and believe in, or find deep inspiration from. The characters are beautiful and their problems are tragic. I can see myself reading this book again and studying its prose but I cant say “I loved it” or consider it one of the greatest works of literature of all time, though maybe the best work of fiction I have read that was published in the 1990s. Way better than Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis or Tai Pei by Tao Lin, and about on par with Submission by Michel Houellebecq, maybe marginally worse (as far as modern novels go).
While I was enjoying this book I asked my mom “Hey, have you read this book? I found it on your book shelf and think its great.” And she said she hadn’t even read it! We had this book sitting in the house since I was a baby and no one even knew what it was.
When I picked up this book I looked at the title and thought: surely this is a girly book, about women, and I will find it boring. This is “chick-lit”, not real literature. And even though I haven’t knowingly read any “chick-lit” everything in that category is rubbish, and a waste of my time. I have enjoyed female authors like Carol Dweck and Kate Murphy, but their subject matter is praxis, practical matters. I find their advice extremely useful, and talk about and recommend their books. But I haven’t read really any fiction by a female author I truly enjoyed.
So when I picked up this book and started reading with that prejudice in mind, I was fully expecting to give up out of boredom. If I did finish this book, I would do so hastily only to say I had read Mary Gaitskills work and could confirm it was garbage. I picked up the book out of boredom and sat down in a warm sunny spot and started reading. I could hardly tear myself away from her book and quickly became obsessed.
In part 1 the two women are introduced. The fat one is a former member of a fictitious version of Ayn Rands inner circle and the thin one is an amateur journalist writing a hit piece about her ideology. After their rather short interview ends the real story begins. In part 2 she takes you back through their life histories, adolescent development, relationships, pivotal life events, etc. The quality of her writing is superb. Her descriptions, metaphors and characterizations communicate the intimate internal workings of these young women, the hostile environments of their youth, deranged upbringings, their experiences and the conflicting feelings they have. Easily some of the best writing I have encountered in years. It is especially impressive because this was her first published novel. She seems like an incredibly talented writer.
I am not really familiar with Ayn Rands philosophy. I have read one of her books and wasn’t impressed. The number of idiots complaining about her work and the numerically inferior, timid followers she has attracted turned me off from ever reading or taking her ideas seriously years ago. However the vigor, energy and confidence of the fat woman, the supposed embodiment of Ayn Rands philosophy in this story, has made me reconsider. She starts out as a timid abused girl. Her father begins to rape her in her adolescence. While her peers are talking about the boys they have a crush on in school, and who they want to sleep with, she goes home every night, broken, knowing her father will rape her. While her peers are having sex with young men their age, she is having sex, being raped by, her father. On top of this she is fat and no one likes her or wants to give her a chance. She overcomes these circumstances, she cuts her parents out of her life, she finds a sense of identity, she meets her idol Anna Granite (a fictitious version of Ayn Rand), and works for her and becomes a key member of her group.
The thin girl on the other hand is a bit of an evil bitch. She is also abused by an older man when she is very young, then goes on to abuse others. She lives a confusing life, trying to reconcile her conflicting desire for love, sexual excitement from sadism/masochism and the trauma of her early childhood. Throughout the story she lets men abuse her and treat her like shit. A few times I had to put the book down and stop reading. Some very sickening things. Maybe I am less sophisticated and need to be educated in the ways of beating women for sexual pleasure. I am not trying to be patronizing, maybe the sadists have a point, maybe some light spanking, but reading about torturing someone makes my skin crawl. It makes me feel awful that this is how this woman is dealing with her trauma, and that it has effectively cut her off from having a loving relationship with someone that cares about her because it will never be as intense as a stranger choking her unconscious.
Both of the characters are basically well read geniuses, so the dialogue between them, with other characters and their inner monologues are so interesting and insightful its hard not to like them and the book generally. I won’t spoil the ending just in case you do read this novel, though I doubt you’ll be able to find a physical copy and after a cursory glance online it may be difficult to find a digital version as well.
Goodreads has an internal rating system I abide by. If you hover over 4 stars in the browser version of Goodreads with a mouse you’ll see it says “really like it” vs 5 stars which says “I loved it”. I found a lot of the ideas and opinions of the author annoying though I think she approached the inherently unlikable fat woman with so much empathy and love, and didn’t demonize Ayn Rands philosophy in some annoying predictable way so she deserves a lot of credit for that. The story doesn’t have some great cosmic triumphal ending, something I could buy into and believe in, or find deep inspiration from. The characters are beautiful and their problems are tragic. I can see myself reading this book again and studying its prose but I cant say “I loved it” or consider it one of the greatest works of literature of all time, though maybe the best work of fiction I have read that was published in the 1990s. Way better than Less Than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis or Tai Pei by Tao Lin, and about on par with Submission by Michel Houellebecq, maybe marginally worse (as far as modern novels go).
While I was enjoying this book I asked my mom “Hey, have you read this book? I found it on your book shelf and think its great.” And she said she hadn’t even read it! We had this book sitting in the house since I was a baby and no one even knew what it was.
October 8, 2024
“The mob on the platform grew in number, everyone bearing down hard on the track of daily habit, staring into the maw of the impending day, pacing in insect circles, pitching their thoughts and feelings into the future or the past, anywhere but the subway.”
July 10, 2024
i read gaitskill’s short story “this is pleasure” in the beginning of the year and was completely blown away by it. so when i saw this book, i knew i had to give it a shot.
the writing style is unlike anything i have read this year. it’s nasty, biting, sharp & raw. and it makes sense- gaitskill explores the complexities of family and how it contributes to trauma. specifically child sexual abuse. she’s completely honest with the trauma that justine and dorothy undergo—so if child abuse and rape are sensitive topics to you, i don’t recommend this. the content is very graphic, and those detailed aspects remind me of “a little life.”
the chapters are told in alternating POVs and they (i think) were specifically designed that way. dorothy’s chapters are in first person POV and justine’s chapters are in third person POV. it makes sense. although both women have dealt with awful things in their childhood, they handle them differently. dorothy is of course traumatized but she is more transparent with her past and is willing to move forward. this is demonstrated in the end when she rescues justine from a particular (disgusting) sexual partner. the 3rd person POV choice in justine’s chapters reflect a distance. it’s not supposed to be personal. i can’t remember where but justine made a remark (to herself) about wearing a cloak in defense.
the parents in this book SUCK, full disclosure. firstly, dorothy’s father because he was an abusive creepy rapist—and a hypocrite on top of that. again—very descriptive. her mother was basically just ✨there✨ she had a feeling that her daughter was getting raped by her husband but didn’t want to say anything. women like her DISGUST me. justine’s parents were basically nonexistent and not supportive. her mother knew about the molestation because justine told her. her response made me livid.
the overall story was well-written, but extremely heavy. the only negative things i have to say: 1) the characters didn’t really feel personal to me but i can see why. they went through unbelievable pain growing up and the closed off behavior could be interpreted as a self-defense mechanism. 2) i wasn’t particularly interested in the philosophical component. i definitely see that dorothy used that to heal from her trauma but i just wasn’t interested. i did not find the ideals compelling. 3) since the book was largely about granite’s principles, i was expecting more. i thought gaitskill would delve more into granite as a person, but she didn’t. i was kinda disappointed.
i think you will like this if you loved “the lying life of adults” by elena ferrante and “a little life” by hanya yanagihara.
Trigger warnings: rape, incest, child abuse/molestation, bullying
the writing style is unlike anything i have read this year. it’s nasty, biting, sharp & raw. and it makes sense- gaitskill explores the complexities of family and how it contributes to trauma. specifically child sexual abuse. she’s completely honest with the trauma that justine and dorothy undergo—so if child abuse and rape are sensitive topics to you, i don’t recommend this. the content is very graphic, and those detailed aspects remind me of “a little life.”
the chapters are told in alternating POVs and they (i think) were specifically designed that way. dorothy’s chapters are in first person POV and justine’s chapters are in third person POV. it makes sense. although both women have dealt with awful things in their childhood, they handle them differently. dorothy is of course traumatized but she is more transparent with her past and is willing to move forward. this is demonstrated in the end when she rescues justine from a particular (disgusting) sexual partner. the 3rd person POV choice in justine’s chapters reflect a distance. it’s not supposed to be personal. i can’t remember where but justine made a remark (to herself) about wearing a cloak in defense.
the parents in this book SUCK, full disclosure. firstly, dorothy’s father because he was an abusive creepy rapist—and a hypocrite on top of that. again—very descriptive. her mother was basically just ✨there✨ she had a feeling that her daughter was getting raped by her husband but didn’t want to say anything. women like her DISGUST me. justine’s parents were basically nonexistent and not supportive. her mother knew about the molestation because justine told her. her response made me livid.
the overall story was well-written, but extremely heavy. the only negative things i have to say: 1) the characters didn’t really feel personal to me but i can see why. they went through unbelievable pain growing up and the closed off behavior could be interpreted as a self-defense mechanism. 2) i wasn’t particularly interested in the philosophical component. i definitely see that dorothy used that to heal from her trauma but i just wasn’t interested. i did not find the ideals compelling. 3) since the book was largely about granite’s principles, i was expecting more. i thought gaitskill would delve more into granite as a person, but she didn’t. i was kinda disappointed.
i think you will like this if you loved “the lying life of adults” by elena ferrante and “a little life” by hanya yanagihara.
Trigger warnings: rape, incest, child abuse/molestation, bullying
October 11, 2020
Thoroughly enjoyed my stay in Metaphor City. Stirling first novel with some clunkiness integrating the satirical aspects of Anna Granite's (Ayn Rand) philosophy with the internal and external realities of Justine Shade and Donna Never's lives. The novel's pacing suffers somewhat as a result but Gaitskill's consummate ability reined me in for the full journey. Recommended!
March 21, 2007
Utterly depressing. I appreciate, from a literary standpoint, what Gaitskill is trying to achieve, but after I read this book I pretty much wished I hadn't. She is a much stronger short story writer, in my opinion.
September 9, 2024
I had no idea what this book was about before I picked it up. Five pages in, I immediately clocked that the prolific Anna Granite and the cult followers of the Definitist movement were a stand in for Ayn Rand’s Objectivism with many references to the characters of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Wow!
I found myself laughing at Gaitskill’s description of members of the Definitist movement, often described as awkward, overweight, and offputting. So the average Ayn Rand supporter? Just kidding! I actually don’t hate Rand as much as the next person. I certainly think her philosophy is grossly unrealistic and self indulgent, but I can appreciate the need for hedonism, sometimes. And it’s very obvious that Gaitkills understands the nuances of Rand’s ideology, but nonetheless is able to hilariously satirize her ideas and the people who adamantly believe in them.
But enough about Ayn Rand: Two Girls, Fat and Thin details the sexual and emotional abuse of two women, one fat, Dorothy Never and one thin, Justine Shade (although their weight is the least of their problems). Dorothy is an avid Anna Granite supporter and Justine is a part time secretary/free lance writer who sets out to write an article on the Definitist movement and interviews Dorothy in doing so. The two women have a love/hate relationship and infatuation with each other. Through Granite’s philosophy, the two women connect over their childhood abuse and how it has affected them in very different ways into adulthood.
What I loved most about this book was Gaitskill’s ability to so accurately and emotionally describe the feminine experience. Whether it was a dreamy and nostalgic depiction of female emotion or a poignant and disturbing image of adolescence, Gaitskill really understands how to encapsulate the feelings and experiences we often times do not have to words for. At the same time, I found myself laughing at the witty and sarcastic thoughts and dialogue of Dorothy and Justine. One moment I would feel paralyzed by the darkness of teenage debauchery and the next I was laughing at how each women’s perception of each other were so off kilter with how they viewed themselves.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed this story, I think the pacing of the book was a bit off. I devoured the first 100 pages in one sitting and then found myself lagging through the middle 150 pages and then the big ending scene seemed to happen and resolve itself within the last 50 pages. Not to mention the switch between first person and third person narration to distinguish Dorothy and Justine’s recollection of their childhood was interesting, but very confusing. The flashbacks of the two girls seemed to merge into one story where it became difficult to tell which girl was narrating, but I guess that was Gaitkills point.
I also wonder if I would have enjoyed this book as much had I not read The Fountainhead or had a cursory understanding of Ayn Rand’s philosophy…
Either way, I definitely plan on reading more Gaitskill in the future. I think her writing and the themes she touches on are right up my ally and I can’t wait to read more!
I found myself laughing at Gaitskill’s description of members of the Definitist movement, often described as awkward, overweight, and offputting. So the average Ayn Rand supporter? Just kidding! I actually don’t hate Rand as much as the next person. I certainly think her philosophy is grossly unrealistic and self indulgent, but I can appreciate the need for hedonism, sometimes. And it’s very obvious that Gaitkills understands the nuances of Rand’s ideology, but nonetheless is able to hilariously satirize her ideas and the people who adamantly believe in them.
But enough about Ayn Rand: Two Girls, Fat and Thin details the sexual and emotional abuse of two women, one fat, Dorothy Never and one thin, Justine Shade (although their weight is the least of their problems). Dorothy is an avid Anna Granite supporter and Justine is a part time secretary/free lance writer who sets out to write an article on the Definitist movement and interviews Dorothy in doing so. The two women have a love/hate relationship and infatuation with each other. Through Granite’s philosophy, the two women connect over their childhood abuse and how it has affected them in very different ways into adulthood.
What I loved most about this book was Gaitskill’s ability to so accurately and emotionally describe the feminine experience. Whether it was a dreamy and nostalgic depiction of female emotion or a poignant and disturbing image of adolescence, Gaitskill really understands how to encapsulate the feelings and experiences we often times do not have to words for. At the same time, I found myself laughing at the witty and sarcastic thoughts and dialogue of Dorothy and Justine. One moment I would feel paralyzed by the darkness of teenage debauchery and the next I was laughing at how each women’s perception of each other were so off kilter with how they viewed themselves.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed this story, I think the pacing of the book was a bit off. I devoured the first 100 pages in one sitting and then found myself lagging through the middle 150 pages and then the big ending scene seemed to happen and resolve itself within the last 50 pages. Not to mention the switch between first person and third person narration to distinguish Dorothy and Justine’s recollection of their childhood was interesting, but very confusing. The flashbacks of the two girls seemed to merge into one story where it became difficult to tell which girl was narrating, but I guess that was Gaitkills point.
I also wonder if I would have enjoyed this book as much had I not read The Fountainhead or had a cursory understanding of Ayn Rand’s philosophy…
Either way, I definitely plan on reading more Gaitskill in the future. I think her writing and the themes she touches on are right up my ally and I can’t wait to read more!
March 10, 2025
Mary Gaitskill you stare into my soul... TFW you finally meet someone who you think understands you and the only thing worse than realizing that they don't is realizing that they do, but not completely. Also love the Nabokov epigraph (and Justine's surname being Shade is presumably a Pale Fire shoutout) which also reminds me that Gaitskill has the correct Nabokov take: trying to imitate his prose makes you look stupid but he's still thrilling to read and can perhaps influence you in less obvious ways
"What he said bore no relation to what she felt, but she was seduced by the idea of herself prancing through his imagination as a tiny porn queen while the truth of what had happened lay safely hidden in a pocket of misunderstanding. At the same time, she felt a compulsion to make him understand her, and she was disconcerted to realize that the more he refused to do so, the more desperate the compulsion would become. 'Really,' she said, smiling. 'It wasn’t like that.' And she told the story again."
"What he said bore no relation to what she felt, but she was seduced by the idea of herself prancing through his imagination as a tiny porn queen while the truth of what had happened lay safely hidden in a pocket of misunderstanding. At the same time, she felt a compulsion to make him understand her, and she was disconcerted to realize that the more he refused to do so, the more desperate the compulsion would become. 'Really,' she said, smiling. 'It wasn’t like that.' And she told the story again."
January 4, 2016
I chose Two Girls, Fat and Thin for our book club (The League of Unreliable Narrators, aka #Chicagiforifiction) because I hadn't read any Mary Gaitskill, and I'd heard good things about both this, her debut novel, and her breakout short story collection, Bad Behavior. I didn't know much except that it had some pretty explicit S&M, and was partially about an Ayn Rand-like writer and political thinker named Anna Granite. So, off we went into the woods of self-hate and Definitism.
To start with, the Rand stuff is on the nose, so literally ported from both the literature and the beliefs of the most revered saint among American assholes, it could only have been changed in name due to threats of lawsuit. I would have loved if Gaitskill had tweaked the mythology a bit, but it's pretty much a 1:1 conversion.
With that as a backdrop, we get the account of Dorothy Never (born Dorothy Footie), a devout follower of Anna Granite, and journalist Justine Shade, who is working on an expose of the since-repudiated Definitist movement.
This is all in the first 30 pages. The two have a meeting, and it's clear that 1. Justine isn't in it to show the world how misunderstood the poor Definitists are, and 2. Dorothy thinks that's exactly what Justine is doing. They leave with those contrasting thoughts in their head, and that's the last of the present we see for quite some time.
Gaitskill sends us back 18 to 20 years, to the childhoods of both Dorothy and Justine, in a long, long, LONG section intended to give the background of how these two people became who they are. Both are both victims of abuse (Justine was molested by a friend of her father's; Dorothy by her own father, repeatedly, for years), and both spent time not only as victim but also as aggressor. The book is full of long, lurid, disquieting sections about the brutality of girl cliques, everyone either tormenting physically or emotionally, often to the point of suicide or relocation to a new school. Gaitskill is unforgiving here, and the girls' childhoods, which often blur together (on purpose, I suspect), are full of domineering fathers, heaps of abuse, and coping mechanisms that often include transferring that abuse to people even weaker. And not only is it hard reading, there is a LOT of it. It wouldn't have taken more than adding a hundred extra pages to cut this section out of the novel and making it its own gruesome little coming-of-age novel.
With this much riding on the past, I assumed that, as we return to the present, Gaitskill would use all this fuel like a rocket booster, the pain and loathing of the past guiding the decisions of the present day.
But she never really does. Whether disinterest in the subject or simply the pacing issues of a debut novel, the two parts never really join together. As such, all of the fuel Gaitskill has poured in doesn't fire the rocket into the stratosphere, but causes it to explode on the launch pad.
The interview continues, and Dorothy begins to obsess over Justine and how her article will return Definitism to its rightful place in American thought -- even though Anna Granite has been dead for several years, Dorothy is still a true believer -- while Justine finds herself embroiled in an increasingly dangerous sexual relationship. The S&M sections are gnarly and emphatically in violation of The Rules, so to speak. When the article on Definitism is published, Dorothy reads it, and she isn't happy. Her final encounter with Justine comprises the fever-pitched conclusion to the book. Of that, I won't say any more.
There was a lot I liked here. Despite the explicitness of the coming-of-age section, and its absurd length, I can't think of too many books that have really poked that deep into the heart of adolescent anger and barbarism. If this doesn't look like how you remember junior high and high school, congratulations on having a much better adjusted childhood than I did. Gaitskill shows the ease in which kids, in search of their identity and seeking a step up in the pecking order, fall easily into prejudice, bullying, conformity, and close-mindedness. It wasn't pretty, but I didn't find it lurid or unrealistic, either.
The place where it really falls down is connecting this to the rest of the book. The Definitism article Justine writes is comedically histrionic -- what paper would allow a part-time freelancer with few credits to her name to write a full-length expose of a major political movement more or less unsupervised? The sections we read over Dorothy's shoulder have the marks of an amateur hack, going for easy comparison's like "an encapsulation of the right-wing id gone mad." I mean, fair enough, but where's the *craft*? It doesn't ring true, unless it's meant to be a half-assed expose. As for the resolution, I was surprised at how sudden it was. After the elongated explanations throughout the book, all the development of motives and shared histories, the last 15 pages have the feel of "five minutes until pencils down, class." It just lands with a wet thud. It doesn't belong as the cap to such an otherwise potent, if uneven, narrative. The writing is tremendous (and even funny, on occasion) everywhere but at the very end.
I can't say I entirely enjoyed this (and I don't expect I'll ever read it again), but I admired an awful lot of it, even if I did so with fingers half over my eyes. It's a rough go, but its biggest sin is that it doesn't really do all that much with all the atrocity. We had a lot to discuss at our book club (including W's great tagline: "At last, the book the answers the age-old question, 'What Kind of Sick Fuck Reads Ayn Rand?'"), but nobody really came away feeling very good about the whole thing.
To start with, the Rand stuff is on the nose, so literally ported from both the literature and the beliefs of the most revered saint among American assholes, it could only have been changed in name due to threats of lawsuit. I would have loved if Gaitskill had tweaked the mythology a bit, but it's pretty much a 1:1 conversion.
With that as a backdrop, we get the account of Dorothy Never (born Dorothy Footie), a devout follower of Anna Granite, and journalist Justine Shade, who is working on an expose of the since-repudiated Definitist movement.
This is all in the first 30 pages. The two have a meeting, and it's clear that 1. Justine isn't in it to show the world how misunderstood the poor Definitists are, and 2. Dorothy thinks that's exactly what Justine is doing. They leave with those contrasting thoughts in their head, and that's the last of the present we see for quite some time.
Gaitskill sends us back 18 to 20 years, to the childhoods of both Dorothy and Justine, in a long, long, LONG section intended to give the background of how these two people became who they are. Both are both victims of abuse (Justine was molested by a friend of her father's; Dorothy by her own father, repeatedly, for years), and both spent time not only as victim but also as aggressor. The book is full of long, lurid, disquieting sections about the brutality of girl cliques, everyone either tormenting physically or emotionally, often to the point of suicide or relocation to a new school. Gaitskill is unforgiving here, and the girls' childhoods, which often blur together (on purpose, I suspect), are full of domineering fathers, heaps of abuse, and coping mechanisms that often include transferring that abuse to people even weaker. And not only is it hard reading, there is a LOT of it. It wouldn't have taken more than adding a hundred extra pages to cut this section out of the novel and making it its own gruesome little coming-of-age novel.
With this much riding on the past, I assumed that, as we return to the present, Gaitskill would use all this fuel like a rocket booster, the pain and loathing of the past guiding the decisions of the present day.
But she never really does. Whether disinterest in the subject or simply the pacing issues of a debut novel, the two parts never really join together. As such, all of the fuel Gaitskill has poured in doesn't fire the rocket into the stratosphere, but causes it to explode on the launch pad.
The interview continues, and Dorothy begins to obsess over Justine and how her article will return Definitism to its rightful place in American thought -- even though Anna Granite has been dead for several years, Dorothy is still a true believer -- while Justine finds herself embroiled in an increasingly dangerous sexual relationship. The S&M sections are gnarly and emphatically in violation of The Rules, so to speak. When the article on Definitism is published, Dorothy reads it, and she isn't happy. Her final encounter with Justine comprises the fever-pitched conclusion to the book. Of that, I won't say any more.
There was a lot I liked here. Despite the explicitness of the coming-of-age section, and its absurd length, I can't think of too many books that have really poked that deep into the heart of adolescent anger and barbarism. If this doesn't look like how you remember junior high and high school, congratulations on having a much better adjusted childhood than I did. Gaitskill shows the ease in which kids, in search of their identity and seeking a step up in the pecking order, fall easily into prejudice, bullying, conformity, and close-mindedness. It wasn't pretty, but I didn't find it lurid or unrealistic, either.
The place where it really falls down is connecting this to the rest of the book. The Definitism article Justine writes is comedically histrionic -- what paper would allow a part-time freelancer with few credits to her name to write a full-length expose of a major political movement more or less unsupervised? The sections we read over Dorothy's shoulder have the marks of an amateur hack, going for easy comparison's like "an encapsulation of the right-wing id gone mad." I mean, fair enough, but where's the *craft*? It doesn't ring true, unless it's meant to be a half-assed expose. As for the resolution, I was surprised at how sudden it was. After the elongated explanations throughout the book, all the development of motives and shared histories, the last 15 pages have the feel of "five minutes until pencils down, class." It just lands with a wet thud. It doesn't belong as the cap to such an otherwise potent, if uneven, narrative. The writing is tremendous (and even funny, on occasion) everywhere but at the very end.
I can't say I entirely enjoyed this (and I don't expect I'll ever read it again), but I admired an awful lot of it, even if I did so with fingers half over my eyes. It's a rough go, but its biggest sin is that it doesn't really do all that much with all the atrocity. We had a lot to discuss at our book club (including W's great tagline: "At last, the book the answers the age-old question, 'What Kind of Sick Fuck Reads Ayn Rand?'"), but nobody really came away feeling very good about the whole thing.
July 4, 2025
Very insightful about the horrors of childhood, friendship, and intimacy.
Read
September 19, 2024reeaal good
February 14, 2022
Only got into this about 200 pages in. Sounded like something id really be into - two women meeting over a mutual interest/love of a writer, but I don’t think it was executed well.
January 24, 2015
With the caveat that I would probably not choose to read this a second time: this is a dense, dark, dramatic (but not unrealistic) look at the traumas of girlhood, in all of their forms. As one might expect from the title, Gaitskill's major points of exploration are body image, sexuality, and gendered power struggles, all sort of brilliantly set against the backdrop of a fictional Ayn Rand character and her work.
The most recommendable thing about this book is Gaitskill's writing. She's a writer of literary fiction, but she never makes a stretch of a metaphor or settles for cliche. There was no descriptive sentence that I couldn't get behind, because they all accurately described the viscera of the feeling in ways that I might not have considered, but seemed fitting. Her writing is clear and easy to read.
But the story is not so easy to read (except for the "Anna Granite"/Ayn Rand parts, which can be funny). Both main characters have been sexually abused, which shapes their personalities and the way they relate to each other. It's an interesting concept, but as you can probably imagine, depressing. And again, dense! given how deeply Gaitskill goes into their lives and memories.
Worth reading once to perceive little moments as Gaitskill does. But I don't think I'd have the energy to read it again.
The most recommendable thing about this book is Gaitskill's writing. She's a writer of literary fiction, but she never makes a stretch of a metaphor or settles for cliche. There was no descriptive sentence that I couldn't get behind, because they all accurately described the viscera of the feeling in ways that I might not have considered, but seemed fitting. Her writing is clear and easy to read.
But the story is not so easy to read (except for the "Anna Granite"/Ayn Rand parts, which can be funny). Both main characters have been sexually abused, which shapes their personalities and the way they relate to each other. It's an interesting concept, but as you can probably imagine, depressing. And again, dense! given how deeply Gaitskill goes into their lives and memories.
Worth reading once to perceive little moments as Gaitskill does. But I don't think I'd have the energy to read it again.
June 21, 2008
A friend of mine who is an avid reader with nearly impeccable taste had recommended that I read the entire catalogue of her work, so when I ran across this book, I decided to give it a try.
Now, I'm no expert, but the story is centered around a dead writer whose books and individually driven philosophy closely resemble those and that of Ayn Rand. The two central characters (one fat, one thin) have lived lives running strangely parallel, though they were on opposite sides of a similar experience (for example, one girl bullies, one girl is the victim of bullying). Both have been influenced by the fictitious author in some way. All the experiences have led to one unexpected apex of interaction between the two.
Gaitskill seems to be the master of writing about the psychology of women. These women have been victimized, they have been victimizers. They have been at the mercy of fate and likewise made choices that have caused them pain. What's interesting in the story, is that neither beauty nor ugliness has saved either of the women from anything. I think that's really what the story is about. I was amazed by how quickly I read this book - and now I highly recommend you do the same!
Now, I'm no expert, but the story is centered around a dead writer whose books and individually driven philosophy closely resemble those and that of Ayn Rand. The two central characters (one fat, one thin) have lived lives running strangely parallel, though they were on opposite sides of a similar experience (for example, one girl bullies, one girl is the victim of bullying). Both have been influenced by the fictitious author in some way. All the experiences have led to one unexpected apex of interaction between the two.
Gaitskill seems to be the master of writing about the psychology of women. These women have been victimized, they have been victimizers. They have been at the mercy of fate and likewise made choices that have caused them pain. What's interesting in the story, is that neither beauty nor ugliness has saved either of the women from anything. I think that's really what the story is about. I was amazed by how quickly I read this book - and now I highly recommend you do the same!
January 29, 2020
I love Mary Gaitskill so much. I really think she is my favorite author... She knows how to write about being a woman in such a heartbreakingly, slap-in-the-face realistic way. This is her first novel but the third novel I have read by her, I started with her short stories which were what drew me in. This book is disgustingly and disturbingly good. It chronicles two different women - one interviewing another for an article about Anna Granite, an Ayn Rand type woman with a cult-ish following. This book is just so realistic! Not only because of the huge resurgence of The popularity of Ayn Rand and libertarians in politics in the last decade (even though this book was written in 1991) but because it follows two very different women - “fat” and “thin” - and discusses their similarities and their personal relationships and what made them be the way that they are while also critiquing the dogmatic principles of Libertarianism without actually saying them because it’s fiction! Hah. I love the unglamorousness of the way Gaitskill writes anything. It’s gritty and her prose is beautiful at the same time which leads to a lovely and gross and unique combination. I loved this book.
April 25, 2007
There's something about this book that you just don't want to put down, and something about it that you really don't want to touch. It's a long story of dysjunction and marginalization, self-torture and the ways people manage to hurt each other and somehow still find common ground. Gaitskill has a predilection for the eerie blurriness of sexuality, the place where tenderness and pathology intersect, and loneliness lies down with brutality. These shadowy encounters make up the economy of human relationships, for Gaitskill, which is kind of a bleak view. I can't say I would read this book again, but I can say it has stayed with me, and that her writing - with its searing honesty, its lucidity, its raw pain and its attention to the craft in each sentence - has informed and improved my own.
October 20, 2007
In the first 3 pages of this book, i was ready to put it down. I found the prose self-consciously disinterested, the metaphors forced, and the characters unlikable. However, I had promised a good friend I would read it so I kept on. About page 20 the book got into a great rhythm. The narrators dual voice co-alesced as the main characters took shape. When the narrative began to sweep backward, through the childhoods of the "two girls", the book became one of those rare windows into the strange emotional formulas that usher us from shattered innocense to adulthood. Wow, sorry for the mixed metaphors but you get the picture. There is also a very funny and painfully believable send up of Ayn Rand and her appeal. This book reminded me of Cruddy, Atonement and Autobiography of a Face in the sheer honesty of its take on the strangeness, wonder, and isolation of being a kid.
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