Editions

Because They Wanted To

Because They Wanted To

RELEASED 05/11/2020

First published in the late 1990s and a bestseller at the time, this incisive collection of short stories explores connection and disconnection in families, between ex-lovers and friends. From a father reflecting on the daughter whose lesbianism he cannot accept, to two people who were once young together stumbling over the foundations of their past, inside are twelve portraits of heart-rending emotional intimacy and the delicacy of relationships. Because They Wanted To is a perfectly formed set of stories about alienation in modern times.

Reviews

  • I really admire how Mary Gaitskill is willing to think about the problematic with complexity and humanity, and without taking sides or engaging in all the fashionable moral hectoring that passes for serious thought these days.

    Eimear McBride

  • Gaitskill shares Edith Wharton's forensic awareness of what happens just beneath the surface of high-toned encounters in public places

    Independent

  • 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

    Meghan O'Rourke, New York Times Book Review

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About the Author

Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To (nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award), and Don't Cry, the novels The Mare, Veronica (nominated for the National Book Award), Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and a collection of essays, Somebody with A Little Hammer. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Artforum, and Granta, among many other journals, as well as in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories.

Mary Gaitskill

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