Description: "In The Devil's Treasure--aptly subtitled A Book of Stories and Dreams--the iconic author Mary Gaitskill has created a chimerical hybrid of fiction, memoir, essay, criticism, and visual art that transcends categorization. This collage of four novels (one a work in progress), interspersed with and thematically linked by a single short story, then woven together with the author's commentary, is a kind of director's cut revealing the personal and societal forces that inform each individual piece of work, an ongoing, passionate exploration of core human emotions and experience, the ideally, sometimes quixotically high and grossly, confusedly low. With the stylistic daring and preternatural acuity that has made her one of America's most original writers, Gaitskill has created a layered vision of modern life that simultaneously blends the huge prehistoric creatures that swim at the bottom of our collective ocean with a family that picnics on the beach while a podcast natters about politics and a perhaps dangerously curious child explores the lapping waves."--Provided by publisher.
Brief description:
Mary Gaitskill is the author of Bad Behavior; Two Girls, Fat and Thin; Because They Wanted To; Veronica; Don't Cry; The Mare; Somebody with a Little Hammer; and This Is Pleasure. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories.
Review Quotes:
Praise for The Devil's Treasure:
"This superb book is for more than just super fans. Gaitskill speaks about the opposition inside us, the doubleness of human nature, and a longing for unity."
--Michael Silverblatt, KCRW Bookworm
"Gaitskill is an era-defining talent, one of the best American fiction writers working today, and the book is a collage of fiction, autobiography, and fairy tale that seeks, through 'ordered disorder, ' to approach a fundamental thing about making art -- one that defines Gaitskill's oeuvre . . . Few people have written as well about broken, dystopian America, both urban and suburban."
--Valerie Stivers, Compact Magazine
"Gaitskill's unusual new project creates a collage out of her previous works, connected by the thread of a new short story . . . The manuscript is color-coded in tones of orange and red which fluctuate page by page . . . This creates a flickering effect evocative of the setting Ginger wanders through, an effect reinforced by Gaitskill's original collages that recall the images hung on hell's walls . . . The book rewards those looking for a deeper connection to Gaitskill's rigorous imagination."
--Kirkus Reviews
"This is Gaitskill's gift: showing the curiosity that cathartically persists at the abyss -- of violence, of humiliation, of separation . . . Gaitskill's legendary style is narcotic, her fictions hallucinatory, as the real often is."
--Quinn Latimer, 4Columns
"The medium of collage emerged to challenge the difference between the real and the artificial. Similarly, The Devil's Treasure draws attention to the line -- increasingly blurred -- between fiction and nonfiction . . . Gaitskill, too, likes to peer into Hell, always with the utmost empathy."
--Mia Levitin, Times Literary Supplement
"A challenging and affecting puzzle . . . Everything under consideration in this unique project is somehow beautiful, even when seemingly pained . . . This is one book that deserves more readers."
--Drew Hart, The Arts Fuse
Praise for Mary Gaitskill:
"Gaitskill isn't scary because she conjures monsters; monsters, she points out, are almost always in fashion. What makes her scary, and what makes her exciting, is her ability to evoke the hidden life, the life unseen, the life we don't even know we are living."
--Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Magazine
"About sex she is an especially distinctive writer. She catches cruelty and inexplicable desire, what she has called 'the dirt within, ' as well as any writer we have. Once you've read her, her little hammer continues to tap in your head."
--Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"No writer is sharper about the fickle exigencies of desire. Dominance and submission -- the shifting poles that govern all relationships, not just sexual ones -- are Gaitskill's great subjects."
--Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker
"Gaitskill is something special. She doesn't grandstand; she lacks self-pity. She has an intuitive sympathy for people acting on their worst impulses and a gift for portraying cruelty without condemnation."
--Emily Nussbaum, New York Magazine
"Bracing in its rigorous truth-seeking, subtle and capacious in its moral vision, Gaitskill's work feels more real than real life and reading her leads to a place that feels like a sacred space."
--Priscilla Gilman, The Boston Globe
"What is most amazing about Gaitskill is her ability to portray the heart of human longing and suffering, and to see in each gesture of our lives the disturbing and conflicting pool of drives that marks our every gesture."
--Sheila Heti, The Believer