Books |
Veronica
Mary Gaitskill
By
Published: Jan 01, 2006
Category:
Fiction
I read this short novel — just 227 pages — several months before the New York Times named it one of the ten best books of 2005. I wanted to tell you about it right after I finished it, but I didn’t have the words. And then the Times gave the book its blessing, and I didn’t want to say "me, too." Actually, what I didn’t want to say was: I don’t have the words.
Now I’m ready to try. Bear with me, okay? And, men, feel free to turn away — this story of the friendship between two women may not be of great interest to you. No giggles, no kinky sex, no glossy action.
In fact, this is a sad, sad book. A one-time model, now in her 50s, is the narrator. The title character is her friend, Veronica, 16 years her senior. Though that changes, of course, when Veronica dies of AIDS, leaving the narrator — late in the book, we finally learn that her name is Alison — to struggle on, friendless and suffering from hepatitis C.
Grim. But let us look away from the Alison who now makes her living cleaning toilets in offices. Let us think of the groovy times, when she was a model, and everyone craved her and her nights were even more exciting than her days. Oops. They weren’t quite like that.
In dribs and drabs — this is a novel that’s meant to disorient you, so there’s no straightforward narrative — we learn that Alison ran away from home at 16. And that her real gift is not so much her skin but her lack of. That is: she’s am empath. She sees music; she hears feelings. It’s not pretty. It can’t be, it’s all too real. Like: "I wonder if Jerry can see any echo of that moment when he scans me. If he does, he probably understands it better than most. The more withered the reality, the more gigantic and tyrannical the dream."
People speak, and for an instant, their spirit shows itself. Gorgeous people — "made not to talk but only to sense and receive." The sex is hot and very 3 AM. Naturally, there’s cocaine, for more distance. "Ten years from now," Alison thinks, "I will be a kiss in a great field of faceless kisses." Her lover — who is, of course, the head of the modeling agency in, of course, Paris — steals her money. She goes home. The slide begins.
Which brings her, finally, to temp with Veronica, a demon proofreader with a style all her own. An off-putting style, to most. But Alison can see that her eyes are gentle: "They were like windows in a prison cell — you look out and the sky comforts you without your knowing why."
You get it, don’t you? These are life’s losers. Women you see on buses and think, "There but for the grace of God." And here Mary Gaitskill — one of our best writers — takes these broken women and celebrates them. Especially Veronica, with her odd wit and funny clothes and bad attitude and loyalty to the bi-sexual boyfriend who infects her.
A shop girl. A proofreader. Going nowhere in life. Becoming better friends when Veronica starts getting really sick. It’s a perverse story; reading it is like pressing on a black-and-blue mark. It hurts, in a minor, squishy way. And yet there’s an odd pleasure….
Why read this novel? Because it’s so…intimate. Consider this one sentence: "I should never have touched her like that and then turned around and left, leaving her chest open and defenseless against the feelings that might come into it — feelings of love and friendship left unrequited once more." Ridiculous drivel? Then this isn’t the book for you. A stab of recognition? Then this is your next book.
You know the song that goes, "Hurts so good"? This is the book of that song.
