She writes women who are self-destructive and emotionally detached. Many of her female characters ran away as teenagers (most left home at 16—that age is often an emotional turning point in her work); many end up working briefly as prostitutes; most have masochistic streaks—their love affairs are always obsessive and painful. In Gaitskill’s fiction, characters yearn for connection, but connections are always fraught. And intimacy involves humiliation.