Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

An ex-model reflects on her wild ride of a life and her relationship with an older woman who resists society’s conforming rules

Pretty Alison escapes her suburban New Jersey existence and becomes a top model in Paris, the mistress of a powerful man, enjoying all the decadent perquisites of the position.  Her hubris destroys that situation and she soon finds herself back in New Jersey, attending community college with her little sister.  At a temp job, she meets Veronica, the outspoken somewhat pitiful older woman who will not act the meek part she is expected to play.  Then Veronica gets AIDS. Alison pities her and tries to help though most of the time condescends.  Once again Alison leaves the family home for a shot at modeling, this time also successful, but also this time fraught with drug and sexual abuse. Finally, disabled, on the West Coast, her beautiful face ruined, she takes a charity job cleaning an office.

I really admired this novel.  For its ambitious structure, its top notch writing and its wrestling with messy subjects such as forgiveness and ambition. the work is ingeniously structured, opening and closing with a fairy tale, alternating between Alison’s current humble life, her memories of Paris, the story of her working class family, and her time with Veronica, how infuriating and fascinating Veronica could be.  The reality was that Veronica was a pitiful cat lady with AIDS, yet she acted like a queen.  The title of the book says Veronica, but the story is really about Alison’s journey from beautiful yet selfish young woman to her fall as a cleaning lady with a messed up face, hepatitis and yet a deep love for nature and appreciation for life. 

The writing, its technical virtuosity, is so beautiful, the book got painful at times to read.  The voice is beautiful when it uses plain words and beautiful when it’s using fancy words and fancy constructions.  This book needs to be savored, not blown through.  Although at times it dips into slightly precious overwriting, in which I became too conscious of the style and forgot the story.  And the story is Alison searching for some sort of meaning in the painful vicissitudes of life.  And how love seems to redeem the pain.

The Mare by Mary Gaitskill

A girl, a woman, and a horse.

Velveteen Vargas, 11 year old daughter to an illiterate Dominican immigrant, gets a chance to visit the country as a Fresh Air Fund kid. Her foster parents, Ginger and Paul, live near a rundown stable, and in that stable, caged, for she is too aggressive to run free, is a scarred horse called Fiery Girl, disparagingly referred to as “Fugly Girl.” But Velvet has a calming effect on the dangerous horse. Velvet's love for horses and riding grows and it is soon revealed she is a natural equestrienne. Meanwhile, Ginger feels a powerful bond with the disadvantaged child while realistic Paul feels she ignores his commonsense advice about getting too involved.  Also maybe he feels that she ignores him. As Velvet enters adolescent, she encounters the boys of the neighborhood, who are at danger of being shot, and falls in love with one. Meanwhile, Silvia, Velvet's mother, attempts to beat the waywardness out of Velvet and resents the pull this white couple and what they have to offer has on the girl. She says they treat Velvet like a pet. The story always heads toward the climax, the competition with the white girls at the upscale stable.

This novel is plotted like a children’s book (specifically National Velvet), but written with high technical virtuosity, bringing the characters and the conflict to life using brief (sometimes only a paragraph) first person narrations. The writing and the imagery are simple and beautiful, showcasing the unmitigated pain of the characters. Velvet, seemingly unloved apart from a dead grandfather, childless recovering alcoholic Ginger, mourning the death of her mentally ill sister. And Fiery Girl, unable to trust, after being brutally punished by an earlier owner. The three are able to comfort each other, but only partially and only temporarily.

Nominally about a girl and a horse, the book is actually about so much more. This is about race and class in America, the huge and perhaps irremediable differences these two things make in the stability of people’s lives. It’s hard to be even tempered when there’s not enough money for rent, or when your mother’s unsavory tenant molests you, or every boy you know seems to get shot. Like Mona Simpson’s My Hollywood, one of the points of the book is social commentary, presenting a first person narration of American society from someone at the margins, someone not possessing or using the vocabulary of the elite.

In addition to the brilliantly written prose, I also enjoyed the way the tension was skillfully, almost unbearably, ratcheted up, as the plot points planted near the end of each section detonated. One of the questions asked (and not answered) is why do people have such painful lives and why do those people end up making things more painful? The final scene, Velvet’s triumph is also, (I guess) her defeat.