Title: Serious Writing--Not Erotica
Product review: Mary Gaitskill understands compulsion well. She takes you along the fringe and down the dark alleys of sexual urgency without pandering or exploiting. These stories are not designed to titillate, although some of them may. There is nothing mechanical, cliched, or pornographic about them. They are stories about the desire for intimacy--or at least some sense of contact--and the difficulty of achieving it. Stories of passion mixed with cold calculation. Is this the "other"? Or is this you and me? The harsh light of "perverseness" throws these issues into even sharper relief. A particulary fine example of this is the ironically titled story, "A Romantic Weekend," which manages to be both sad and comical. Gaitskill takes a detached view of her characters, but is not pitiless. Her ability to sketch them so precisely presupposes a degree of affection, or acceptance.
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