Don't Cry

In these ten stories Mary Gaitskill works her signature narrative magic, training her generous vision on a broad spectrum of American lives. Beginning with a story of young people adrift in the college town of Ann Arbor on the cusp of the Reagan era and ending with the suspenseful quest of a middle-aged woman to adopt a child in an Ethiopia teetering on the brink of revolution, Gaitskill renders extreme states of feeling and being with stunning immediacy. Each story delivers the dramatic engagement of the intelligent mind with the craving body—or of the intelligent body with the craving mind—that is emblematic of Gaitskill's powerful fiction.