Veronica

By: Mary Gaitskill

Narrated by: Kathe Mazur

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century

The extraordinary new novel from the acclaimed author of Bad Behavior and Two Girls, Fat and Thin, Veronica is about flesh and spirit, vanity, mortality, and mortal affection. Set mostly in Paris and Manhattan in the desperately glittering 1980s, it has the timeless depth and moral power of a fairy tale.

As a teenager on the streets of San Francisco, Alison is discovered by a photographer and swept into the world of fashion-modeling in Paris and Rome. When her career crashes and a love affair ends disastrously, she moves to New York City to build a new life. There she meets Veronica—an older wisecracking eccentric with her own ideas about style, a proofreader who comes to work with a personal “office kit” and a plaque that reads “Still Anal After All These Years.” Improbably, the two women become friends. Their friendship will survive not only Alison’s reentry into the seductive nocturnal realm of fashion, but also Veronica’s terrible descent into the then-uncharted realm of AIDS. The memory of their friendship will continue to haunt Alison years later, when she, too, is aging and ill and is questioning the meaning of what she experienced and who she became during that time.

Masterfully layering time and space, thought and sensation, Mary Gaitskill dazzles the reader with psychological insight and a mystical sense of the soul’s hurtling passage through the world. A novel unlike any other, Veronica is a tour de force about the fragility and mystery of human relationships, the failure of love, and love’s abiding power. It shines on every page with depth of feeling and formal beauty.©2005 Mary Gaitskill; (P)2006 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Gaitskill writes so radiantly about violent self-loathing that the very incongruousness of her language has shocking power." – Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Gaitskill deserves some sort of monument [for this] beautiful, devastating new novel...There are paragraphs like poems in Veronica that lure you back, over and over." —Elle

"Sensuous and precise...Veronica captures the nexus between the erotic glamour [of the 1980's] and its epic heartlessness." –Entertainment Weekly

"Gaitskill has written a novel that will leave you shaking and joyful simultaneously, dizzy with the proximity of private terror and bottomless hope." — O Magazine

"Gaitskill writes from the gut . . . [Her] characters bleed, sweat, cry, and they experience sadness, anger and love as much as a physical sensation as an emotion." –San Francisco Chronicle

"Gaitskill's style is gorgeously caustic . . . Her ability to capture abstract feelings and sensations with a prescise and unexpected metaphor is a squirmy delight to encounter in such abundance." -- Heidi Julavits, Pubishers Weekly

"Veronica is a masterly examination of the relationship between surface and self, culture and fashion, time and memory . . . Gaitskill's brand of brainy lyricism, of acid shot through with grace, is unlike anyone else's . . . Her palpable talent puts her among the most eloquent and perceptive contemporary fiction writers." --Meghan O'Rourke, New York Times Book Review

“[Veronica] creates an atmosphere, provokes a response, and suffuses us with an emotion that we can easily, all too easily, summon up. It's art that you can continue to see even with your eyes closed." –Francine Prose, Slate

Everything is baroque-en

I wanted to like this book. It was a finalist for at least two prestigious awards. The author, however, can't get past half a sentence without relapsing into ornate descriptions. In my opinion, she hasn't learned how to manage her talent. As a result the story, to the extent there is one, slows to a crawl "like tired drivers snaking cars through the molassas of afternoon streets, bits of dull light flashing off their porcelain eyes..." OK, I made that garbage up, but there's a WHOLE lot of that sort of thing, more skillfully written, but just as tiresome. I don't like to think of myself as chauvinistic, but I found myself saying "So, is this what people mean by a 'chick book'?" "Veronica" is self consiously florid. Read 50 pages if you want, but rest assured, by then you have seen the landscape. If you continue past there, it won't be to find out "what happens next." You will continue only because you, like the author, just can't get enough metaphors and clever language. Turning a phrase is not the same as writing a book.

Beautifully written

Gaitskill uses unusual creative language and skillful movement in time to tell the story of a young woman caught up in the glamorous world of high fashion modeling, it's attractions and destructive qualities.

tired characters, dull book

I tried several times to get through this book, but after listening to half of it and seeing no indication that it was going to improve, I gave up. I wanted the characters to be people I could identify with or at least appreciate in some way. But instead, they were tired, self-obsessed, and self-pitying. I think the narrator could have done more to make this a listenable book, but I don't think any narrator could have saved it for me. There wasn't much of a plot; it was more just descriptions of events in the character's life. It seemed like the author was trying to startle the reader with the blase way her character looks back on a risque life. Instead, it was just dull.

Sublime

Veronica is one of my favorite books. The poetry and truthfulness of the character’s interiority— its reflections on beauty, connection and illness/death are emotionally and psychologically poignant.
I was so happy with the reader’s performance. It’s always a relief when you love a book to hear it read by someone who understands the story and the characters.

Veronica

I was unable to find any redeeming qualities in this offering. I am left to wonder how this book was ever considered for any awards. This is the only book selection that was a complete waste of my money.