Veronica
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings3
Average rating3.3
A finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, here is an evocative novel about female friendship in the glittering 1980s. One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years 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.
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There's no question, Mary Gaitskill is a brilliant writer. What impressed me the most was her poetic imagery. She has a unique spin on describing what her character feels, notices, and says. Her protagonist's relationship with Veronica and her father were particularly intriguing, and there I found she had some heart.But though I was impressed, I wondered why I found the book so easy to put down. At first, I thought it was because the main character seemed to fall into situations that didn't serve her. It was like she had little control over her life and I soon became weary reading about one dilemma after the other, where she came out the loser. But as I analyzed the book further, what bothered me and slowed down my reading, was her overuse of adjectives and the poetic prose.
So, even though I admire the author's brilliance, I had to stop at times to consider what she'd written, much as you do when you read poetry. Mary Gaitskill is a master of painting scenes and the inner world of her characters, but I guess as Hemingway pointed out, less is more.
