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Veronica
A Novel
by Mary Gaitskill


7.7

based on 22 reviews
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based on 4 votes
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Official Publisher Site

The acclaimed author's latest novel is set in Europe and New York City during the 1980s, and focuses on an unlikely friendship between two women: Alison, a model and the story's narrator, and Veronica, an older proofreader who develops AIDS.

Pantheon, 240 pages
10/11/2005
$23.00

ISBN: 0375421459

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Booklist Donna Seaman

Elegiac, funny, and life affirming. [1 Sep 2005, p.63]

New York Observer Regina Marler

Although an exhausting read, Veronica is true in ways that few American novels are willing to be true. [24 Oct 2005, p. 19]

PopMatters John Davidson

Veronica is an intensely lyrical and poetic work, full of rich turns of phrase and brilliant, vivid metaphor.

Publishers Weekly Heidi Julavits

Gaitskill's style is gorgeously caustic and penetrating with a homing instinct toward the harrowing.

Kirkus Reviews

A gorgeous, articulate novel that is at once an unflinching meditation on degradation and a paean to deliverance.

The New York Times Janet Maslin

Ms. Gaitskill writes so radiantly about violent self-loathing that the very incongruousness of her language has shocking power.

The New York Times Book Review Meghan O'Rourke

Gaitskill's brand of brainy lyricism, of acid shot through with grace, is unlike anyone else's. And it constitutes some of the most incisive fiction writing around.

Village Voice Benjamin Strong

Veronica bleeds from [Gaitskill's] lacerating intelligence, the rueful wisdom of an author who has aged with her tremendous novel.

Washington Post David Jays

Gaitskill's implacable refusal of sentimentality is her great strength--no group hugs here, just baleful understanding.

Library Journal Eleanor J. Bader

Beautifully and sensitively crafted. [15 Oct 2005, p. 45]

New York Review Of Books Lorin Stein

[Gaitskill] has been at work on Veronica for more than a decade. It is the best thing she has yet written. At a moment when many of our best novels seem to have been written in a borrowed or restored language, Veronica has the sound of original speech.

USA Today Carol Memmott

While the images Gaitskill conjures are ugly and often pessimistic, the writing is exquisite.

The Onion A.V. Club Scott Tobias

Veronica reads like the kind of novel only an austere, awards-giving body could love, with a prose-poetic style that's as undeniably sophisticated as it is hard to crack.

Houston Chronicle Barbara Liss

Redemption is a concept foreign to Gaitskill's books, yet she decides it's been earned in this one. Maybe not. Still, the allure of Veronica lies not in its hopeful possibilities but in its suffering.

San Francisco Chronicle Jennie Yabroff

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.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Catherine Bush

Gaitskill's consummate art lies in her continual complication of emotion--within a scene, within almost every character. This complication is the deep motion of the novel, its rigorous, exhilarating (realistic?) heart. [15 Oct 2005]

Chicago Tribune Carol Anshaw

This is a nervy, unsettling book. [30 Oct 2005]

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

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

Flak Stephen Bracco

Only slightly less obsessed with psychological and sexual trauma as her earlier writing, Gaitskill's also turned spiritual, and even hopeful in her latest work.

Boston Globe Don Lee

Compared with the vibrant sections in the first half, the second half peters out disappointingly.

The New Yorker

When this ambitious approach succeeds, it yields startling revelations; when it doesn't quite come off, the result is a pleasant muddle.

Los Angeles Times Richard Eder

Gaitskill is at her best writing short stories that stun and disconcert like flashes of lightning. Yet, in this longer form, the flashes seem to come from several different directions at once. They dramatically illuminate; at the same time, they often confuse. [23 Oct 2005, p. R5]

The average user rating for this book is 7.7 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Dan C gave it a5:
An unpleasant book about unpleasant, emotionally crippled people. If that's your kind of thing (like the NYC-based Critics Mafia), you'll love it. If you want to read a book whose characters or writing rings true or has anything to say other than that life is bleak and awful, you may want to skip it.

Daniel K gave it a10:
Gaitskill achieve's what An Douglas terms " terrible honesty" Her characters are described aching, stumbling , reqaching for love and meaning and screwing up yet connecting to each other in pervrse wonderful painful ways.

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Veronica A Novel by Mary Gaitskill

Veronica
A Novel
by Mary Gaitskill