num_pages: 83
description: Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent well-dressed Quin a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quins friend Margot the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quins and Margots voices and perspectives Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy one that reveals her characters as whole personshurtful and hurting infuriating and touching and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her charactersand to her readersis that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them even when we dont always admire them is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.
language: English
title: This Is Pleasure: A Story
publisher: Pantheon