With her first published gathering of stories, ''Bad Behavior,'' we meet a vital and gifted new writer, one whose work has an unusual importance at this time....None of the nine excellent stories is, by any means, trendy; all of them would be a challenge to any editor I know. For one thing, you actually have to read these stories and to let them happen to you before you rush to judgment. Technically, they are lean and quick and spare, tightly controlled. Ms. Gaitskill gives them the added psychological dimensions of flashing memories and dreams and fantasies to compete with their well-evoked perceptions. That she manages to accomplish these things within the confines of contemporary stories that move along as quickly and gracefully as anybody's is a small miracle. Style always works for substance, and she can and does give you plain writing or fancy, as needed....This is such a built collection, structured so that each story leads into the next, creating a new world. It is a collection I urge you to read and to read right - from beginning to end. -- New York Times
Lorrie Moore (Bark) and Lydia Davis (Can’t and Won’t) are two masters of the short story whose new collections hit shelves this spring. But if you think of short stories as homework, as slow-moving, language-driven meditations in which nothing ever happens, you’re probably not alone. A recent article in the Millions suggests that our culture’s […]