Alison and Veronica meet amid the nocturnal glamour of 1980s New York: One is a young model stumbling away from the wreck of her career, the other an eccentric middle-aged office temp. Over the next twenty years their friendship will encompass narcissism and tenderness, exploitation and self-sacrifice, love and mortality. Moving seamlessly from present and past, casting a fierce yet compassionate eye on two eras and their fixations, the result is a work of timeless depth and moral power.
Veronica (Vintage Contemporaries)
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Gaitskill begins her bittersweet novel of the friendship between fashion model Alison and the older HIV+ Veronica (whose looks and habits are totally alien to Alison's stylish world) years later when Alison is older and feeling her body slowly decay. While the book follows Alison's younger self as she prances about Paris catwalks and New York nightclubs, the knowledge that she ends up lonely and broken-spirited casts a pall over the telling of those glittering earlier days. Mazur plays on this well, giving Alison a weary yet wistful tone that conveys the weight of her self-loathing. For Veronica's lines, she skillfully alters her voice to be the "bitterly inflected instrument" Gaitskill describes: nasal, almost braying, but direct and honest in contrast to the timidity and insincerity of Alison's words. The narration can be disorienting as it slips from grim present to various points in the past, but that works to the story's advantage, making all the perspectives bleed together, infusing the whole with sadness. Bleak but compelling, the book affords listeners a wonderfully nuanced glimpse inside a damaged psyche.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The New Yorker
Gaitskill's second novel is narrated over the course of a single day by an ailing former fashion model named Alison, now cleaning offices for a living, who ruminates on her glamorous youth and on her friendship with an older woman who died of AIDS. Her recollections range through the bohemian San Francisco of the late nineteen-seventies, the fashion worlds of Paris and New York in the eighties, and her family's claustrophobic but comforting home in suburban New Jersey. Gaitskill's distinctive prose often traverses decades and continents in a single paragraph, in a way that is more montage than narrative. When this ambitious approach succeeds, it yields startling revelations; when it doesn't quite come off, the result is a pleasant muddle. Recalling San Francisco prostitutes, Alison says, "Most of them weren't beautiful girls, but they had a special luster." An analogous allure pervades this book.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 44 people found the following review helpful
By A Reader
Format:Hardcover
What a strange book. I had never read Mary Gaitskill -- a friend bought this for me after we both read the article about her in the New York Times. I found her writing style compelling and unique, but sometimes irritating. Her character observances cut to the bone very swiftly, but there are occasions when she seems to spin out in a vortex of meaningless poetical whatever, and then I would have to just skip the paragraph altogether. I would often have to reread something over and over again to get its meaning; sometimes I would finally grasp what she was getting at (and feel illuminated and really impressed by the knife-point of her skill), and other times she just lost me. The story is very dark and rather hopeless until the final paragraph (I'm still not sure how Alison comes to this final moment of redemption; I think it might be another Gaitskill poetical spin-out). I'm not sure why I should care about anything that went on in the story, but she did pull me in. Gaitskill's craft is in the tightness and economy of her character observations, her vivid fractions and moments. And yet I wasn't able to really 'see' Paris or New York (the characters could have been anywhere) and I'm not even convinced that Gaitskill came to know the modelling world of which she wrote. (I'm not convinced she's familiar with the HIV world either, though I might be wrong about that). Highly ambivalent about this book, obviously.
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
"Veronica" is a complex portrait of a typical suburban girl, restless and bored, disaffected, scornful of the ordinary world around her. Yet Allison has incredible beauty and dabbles in modeling. She casually agrees to have her photos entered in a contest, and she is instantly catapulted into a world of money, drugs and brutal sex. The assurances of proper supervision given to her parents were nonsense, and she becomes the lover of Europe's most powerful agent. It all falls apart, of course; she returns home, tries to finish school, but is inevitably drawn to her former life. She misses her abusive agent, the drugs, the money, the glamour, all the things that almost destroyed her. When we last see her she is older, sick and alone.
Having said that, the book is nothing like that at all. It takes place in a day, as the middle aged Allison drags herself to work as a cleaning person, visits friends and trudges up a mountain in the rain to tire herself out so she can sleep. As she moves through this ordinary, dreary day, her mind skips back to the past, her glamorous and painful life, but most of all to Veronica. Veronica is an improbable friend for the then-elegant Allison; she's boistrous, badly dressed, and embarrasses Allison in public. Yet Veronica emerges as the only person Allison cares about. In the end, she realizes that Veronica saved her by allowing the cold Allison to pity her, and thus become human. It's a redemption of sorts, as Allison faces her own illness and death.
This is a difficult book to read and to write about! Gaitskill gives us a detailed, painful look at the world of modeling--talk about pity! And at times she is a wonderful writer. Allison is sitting on a bus looking down at a car below:
"I look down on one now, just visible through her windshield, sparkling bracelets on hard forearm, clutching the wheel, a fancy-pant thigh, a pulled-down mouth, a hairdo. Bits of light fly across her windshield. I can see her mind beating around the closed car like a bird. Locked in with privileges and pleasures, but also with pain."
But at times I found it slow going, a bit overwritten. And the lives Gaitskill focuses on are destructive, hard and cruel. Allison's world is far from a kind one, and the "gratitude and joy" she feels towards Veronica after Veronica's death is the only gleam of light we see. "Veronica" wons many awards and lots of praise, I imagine for its writing and cold-eyed view of a hard world. But be prepared.
Having said that, the book is nothing like that at all. It takes place in a day, as the middle aged Allison drags herself to work as a cleaning person, visits friends and trudges up a mountain in the rain to tire herself out so she can sleep. As she moves through this ordinary, dreary day, her mind skips back to the past, her glamorous and painful life, but most of all to Veronica. Veronica is an improbable friend for the then-elegant Allison; she's boistrous, badly dressed, and embarrasses Allison in public. Yet Veronica emerges as the only person Allison cares about. In the end, she realizes that Veronica saved her by allowing the cold Allison to pity her, and thus become human. It's a redemption of sorts, as Allison faces her own illness and death.
This is a difficult book to read and to write about! Gaitskill gives us a detailed, painful look at the world of modeling--talk about pity! And at times she is a wonderful writer. Allison is sitting on a bus looking down at a car below:
"I look down on one now, just visible through her windshield, sparkling bracelets on hard forearm, clutching the wheel, a fancy-pant thigh, a pulled-down mouth, a hairdo. Bits of light fly across her windshield. I can see her mind beating around the closed car like a bird. Locked in with privileges and pleasures, but also with pain."
But at times I found it slow going, a bit overwritten. And the lives Gaitskill focuses on are destructive, hard and cruel. Allison's world is far from a kind one, and the "gratitude and joy" she feels towards Veronica after Veronica's death is the only gleam of light we see. "Veronica" wons many awards and lots of praise, I imagine for its writing and cold-eyed view of a hard world. But be prepared.
36 of 42 people found the following review helpful
By Tom Casey
Format:Hardcover
I can think of no author since Virginia Woolf, and no book since Mrs. Dalloway, that achieves what Woolf called transparency as brilliantly as Mary Gaitskill has achieved it in her novel, Veronica. By transparency, Woolf meant a portrait of whole character; mind, feeling, past, present, motility; the process of thought and action by which we make our way in the world each day, the manner in which we absorb life around us and make emotions that teeter at the edge of sanity coherent; how we come to understand our fragile place in the world.
Mary Gaitskill's uncanny sense of how uneven life can be drives a narrative without rules, a story told according to the way we think, this impression or that triggering a memory, an impulse, or something more inchoate; a feeling not yet fully formed or half forgotten, an impression of the world made from a father's unfallen tears in a moment of frightening epiphany. Mary Gaitskill's novel is not about moral judgment, injury, guilt, forgiveness, or fate, it is about life: what it feel like to navigate the days, months, and years using what gifts we may have, surviving our follies, learning to face the truth about aging and mortality, and maybe gaining wisdom.
Alison may at first seem cold, somewhat passive and naďve, until we reflect that she is a teenage girl of uncommon attractiveness who has run away from home into a world of predators. She finds her way into a modeling career and copes with the advantages and pitfalls of sudden success, discovering a cycle of exploitation, rejection, and finally, failure. She leaves that flamboyant career and eventually finds a position as a word-processing temp for an advertising firm working the night shift. There she meets Veronica.
Veronica is like those people who come into our lives through the back door, so to speak, and never leave. They are those friends we have that we often don't think of as friends, exactly. They are those irregulars who, for some reason, take notice of us; we keep them at a certain distance, we hear their stories, we don't approve of them, yet something about their vulnerability gives us courage to accept our humanity, and over time we discover that in this oblique connection we have learned something about love.
This is a very incomplete description what Gaitskill has created. Her story is a kaleidoscope of sensations and reflections taken from the myriad faces one meets in a lifetime of large and slight import, and those experiences, good and bad, that we have had and that others have had, from which at last we begin to draw conclusions about the world and find meaning for our lives. Mary Gaitskill's Veronica is a work of fiction carried to the level of art, something very rare indeed.
Mary Gaitskill's uncanny sense of how uneven life can be drives a narrative without rules, a story told according to the way we think, this impression or that triggering a memory, an impulse, or something more inchoate; a feeling not yet fully formed or half forgotten, an impression of the world made from a father's unfallen tears in a moment of frightening epiphany. Mary Gaitskill's novel is not about moral judgment, injury, guilt, forgiveness, or fate, it is about life: what it feel like to navigate the days, months, and years using what gifts we may have, surviving our follies, learning to face the truth about aging and mortality, and maybe gaining wisdom.
Alison may at first seem cold, somewhat passive and naďve, until we reflect that she is a teenage girl of uncommon attractiveness who has run away from home into a world of predators. She finds her way into a modeling career and copes with the advantages and pitfalls of sudden success, discovering a cycle of exploitation, rejection, and finally, failure. She leaves that flamboyant career and eventually finds a position as a word-processing temp for an advertising firm working the night shift. There she meets Veronica.
Veronica is like those people who come into our lives through the back door, so to speak, and never leave. They are those friends we have that we often don't think of as friends, exactly. They are those irregulars who, for some reason, take notice of us; we keep them at a certain distance, we hear their stories, we don't approve of them, yet something about their vulnerability gives us courage to accept our humanity, and over time we discover that in this oblique connection we have learned something about love.
This is a very incomplete description what Gaitskill has created. Her story is a kaleidoscope of sensations and reflections taken from the myriad faces one meets in a lifetime of large and slight import, and those experiences, good and bad, that we have had and that others have had, from which at last we begin to draw conclusions about the world and find meaning for our lives. Mary Gaitskill's Veronica is a work of fiction carried to the level of art, something very rare indeed.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not her best
Mary Gaitskill is best when she's poking fun at herself a little bit. She doesn't do a lot of that in this book. Read more
Published 6 months ago by SS
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beauty of Words Beyond the Beauty of Form
The prose of the novel really draws the reader in. Usually, when the subject matter revolves around the 80's, we are often given pop culture references for laughs. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Joseph Rainier
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rather Disappointing
Veronica was assigned for my Contemporary Novel class. Now, if you know me, you know that I usually love books that I read for class, so this was not necessarily a deterrent. Read more
Published 17 months ago by ReadingWhileFemale
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awe inspiring
In true literary fashion, there's not much plot in Veronica. On the surface, it's about Alison, a former model who is now middle aged and in poor health, and her past relationship... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Kimberly Wade
4.0 out of 5 stars
Definetly Not for Everyone
I only read this book because I needed a book that started with the letter V for my alphabet challenge. Read more
Published 20 months ago by AgnesMack
5.0 out of 5 stars
~ Beautiful Trees of Honesty Lend Me Your Hand ~
Much can be said of wandering the stacks and simply picking a book by random choice. Almost as if hiking in a forest, and coming upon a single tree in the clearing. Read more
Published on March 6, 2011 by Yasmin H. McEwen
2.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry and Fiction blend like Mustard and Mayo
There are some poets who can write fiction even if they aren't really poets. Marquez, clearly, is one. His sentences are poems. Read more
Published on February 24, 2011 by Someone Like You
5.0 out of 5 stars
incredible
I don't know how a writer can keep writing after reading Veronica. It's like staring at the sun.
Published on January 20, 2010 by subrosa
4.0 out of 5 stars
Undeniably brilliant and repulsive
For readers worried that marital tranquility and maturity might have robbed Gaitskill of her fangs, fear not. Read more
Published on November 7, 2009 by Just_Karen
1.0 out of 5 stars
Boring, pretentious pile of doo-doo!
Yuck! I read 30 pages and gave up! This book is terrible! Enough said.
Published on September 1, 2009 by Dog Mom
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