Because They Wanted to: Stories

Reading a Mary Gaitskill short story is like getting into a no-holds-barred fight: mean, raw, and dangerous. She's fond of portraying characters who seem strangely comfortable living in emotional extremity. She never takes the safe route through a story; in fact, she'll choose the low road every time. The title story places a runaway girl in care of abandoned children. Where many writers would seek out some faint ray of redemption or hope, Gaitskill concentrates on the grime in the cracks of the linoleum. In "The Girl on the Plane," a bitter man confesses his participation in a brutal act to a stranger, but the confession brings no solace. These stories practically shake with tension. In the final long story of this collection, "The Wrong Thing," Gaitskill picks up the tale after the breaking point, as she gracefully illuminates the life of a woman piecing together the fragments of her sexual and emotional history. Because They Wanted not only fulfills the promise of her previous short-story collection Bad Behavior and the novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin, it takes us to a higher place.