book data
492 ratings,
3.47
average rating, 48 reviews
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published
February 27th 1998
(first published 1992)
by Simon & Schuster
binding
Paperback, 320 pages
isbn
0684843129
(isbn13: 9780684843124)
description
Reissued to coincide with the paperback publication of "Because They Wanted To", this captivating novel shimmers with dark intensity and wic...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 742)
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5 stars (92)
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3 stars (164)
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2 stars (59)
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1 star (23)
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avg 3.47
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in January, 2003
recommends it for:
Yes Sir!: The All-Boy Maid Service
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 material and probably unavoidable. (Her second novel, Veronica, is a structural diamond.) The prose is flawless. Her observations are astonishingly incisive, honest, vicious, hilarious, and penetrating. And even oddly comforting. I have read this book at least four or five times and expect that I'll read it again.
I dock a star not for the aforementione...more
I dock a star not for the aforementione...more
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Read in December, 2006
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 Gran...more
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
ayn rand fans AND haters, shrinks, and survivors of child abuse
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...more
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3 comments
Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in April, 2006
It's a good first novel but it has very weak points. The characters have moments of being real, but also long periods of being completely one-dimensional. We get it - one girl is fat, one is thin - but despite their physical differences they connect.
The Ayn Rand stuff didn't do much for me, but I thought Justine's journey was interesting enough to make it through the story. If you want to watch a good writer develop into a great writer, read this along with some of Gaitskill's lat...more
The Ayn Rand stuff didn't do much for me, but I thought Justine's journey was interesting enough to make it through the story. If you want to watch a good writer develop into a great writer, read this along with some of Gaitskill's lat...more
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Read in June, 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 retrospe...more
i read this quickly and remained fully engaged even on crowded subway rides. but in retrospe...more
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Read in March, 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, tha...more
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, tha...more
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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.
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Read in April, 2009
I enjoyed this book and found Gaitskill's insight about certain human conditions, namely loneliness, psychological trauma, and isolation from society, to be a haunting reminder of the cruelty that lies within human nature. Admittedly, there were moments where my skin crawled with disgust, and my mind could not comprehend the idea that one's father could have an incestuous relationship with his daughter for any extended period of time. Or, in Justine's situation, that a father could find out hi...more
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Read in November, 2008
A friend highly recommended this book to me and having read and liked her last novel "Veronica" I was eager to read it. Although I found the end of the beginning section to be a bit bland, I couldn't put it down once the book progressed past the initial character explanation phase. Gaitskill's prose is truly beautiful - a sharp contrast to the abject ugliness of her characters. Despite the lurid content which I would describe as neither erotic or sardonic, I did feel empathy for her to...more
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Read in January, 1999
This is one for the ladies...but it's not "chick lit" crap. It's dark, but very good.
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Read in June, 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 ...more
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 ...more
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Read in May, 2008
Two Girls Fat and Thin is an interesting and engaging read. The bulk of the book is dedicated to describing the intertwining lives of Justin Shade, the “thin” one, and Dorothy Never, the “fat” one. Desperate and lonely, both women are drawn to the ideology of Ayn Rand-esque novelist Anna Granite. Dorothy Never depends on the strict and conservative Definitism (read Rand’s Objectivism) philosophy for survival. She credits Definitism for encouraging her to break out on her own and es...more
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Read in May, 2007
I'm kind of an Ayn Rand hater, so that part of me loved this book. It's a sort of bitchy history of Ayn and her Objectivist movement in thinly veiled terms. But... it's more than that.
It includes Gaitskill's ideas about people, power dynamics and especially power dynamics. In the end, I like how Gaitskill uses the short form better. bad behavior is lovely.
It includes Gaitskill's ideas about people, power dynamics and especially power dynamics. In the end, I like how Gaitskill uses the short form better. bad behavior is lovely.
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Read in February, 2009
A tiny bit pulpy, but hilarious and smart.
How is it that Ayn Rand is never mentioned in any of the bookjacket blurbs? Anyway, this kinda-sorta white woman's version of split double-consciousness is good, and thorough.
There's also a passage that made me jealous, involving the phrase, "Piss on my cunt."
I'm not allowed to write such scenes, and it's only because I'm male.
Sux.
How is it that Ayn Rand is never mentioned in any of the bookjacket blurbs? Anyway, this kinda-sorta white woman's version of split double-consciousness is good, and thorough.
There's also a passage that made me jealous, involving the phrase, "Piss on my cunt."
I'm not allowed to write such scenes, and it's only because I'm male.
Sux.
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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...more
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recommends it for:
people who rarely, if ever, cringe
I keep starting to write a review for this book and then deleting it because her expansive and piercing writing makes mine look obtuse. Every time I so much as pick up this book (to move it, to try to shelve it, any touching at all) I open a page and read a sentence, which turns into a paragraph, which turns into a chapter, which...well, you get the picture. Gaitskill seems harsh and heartfelt because she never flinches, or even blinks. She speaks of the unspeakable in such a frank and beautiful...more
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Read in June, 2009
Gaitskill is delightfully twisted. You find yourself looking into the lives of and absorbing the complexities of each character. Works within my desire to read books that make me feel less of a freak!
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Read in January, 2006
I love Mary Gaitskill. Her writing is raw, and powerful. She writes about things that you never thought anyone else would dare to.
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Standard Gaitskill, dark, detailed, epic, graphic, sexual, sad, moving, and really good.
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