The devil's treasure A book of stories and dreams

Gaitskill's curious new project (after the novella This Is Pleasure) looks back on four of her previous novels and a memoir, splices them with critical self-reflections, and threads the needle with a short work in progress. The slight frame story concerns a seven-year-old girl named Ginger who journeys to hell through a hole in her backyard. As she makes her way back home, she encounters nightmarish reflections, demonic strangers, and Satan himself. But the bulk of the book is excerpts from past books including Veronica (2005), about a budding fashion model, and The Mare (2015), concerning two girls who come of age in upstate New York, where one visits from Brooklyn over the years as part of the Fresh Air Fund, and ride horses together. Hence the reader has several versions of troubled suburban girlhood, haunted or abusive fathers, and barbed early friendships, bordered by long sections in which Gaitskill reflects on her use of the themes, recalls the conditions and intent behind the books' composition, and responds to her critics. As an experiment, this doesn't quite come together. At its best, it functions as a showcase for Gaitskill's powerful back catalog, but more often the indulgent structure fails to hold and obscures her intent. While her insights will prove valuable to her most ardent fans, everyone else can take a pass. (Oct.)

Gaitskill's unusual new project creates a collage out of her previous works, connected by the thread of a new short story. At the age of 7, Ginger goes to hell to steal the Devil's treasure. Traveling down the clean, well-lit stairway in her nightie, Ginger passes scenes of degradation which draw her into their torment, lizards the size of dogs growing out of walls, and a room where all the modern conveniences of the world are running all at once. Finally, she comes to a "quiet, old-fashioned room" where the Devil sits reading a book in an armchair, behind which lies his treasure. Ginger steals the sack of treasure only to discover that now she can never put it down; that the treasure has become a part of her; that it is something she needs but does not want and that the truth it speaks is about love and pain and how they will not be separated in this life or the one beyond. In and of itself, this tale treads territory familiar to anyone versed in Gaitskill's oeuvre: fear and desire intermingle; revulsion and fascination mirror each other. However, this project is not primarily interested in exploring Ginger's story. Rather, the author intersperses short segments of Ginger's tale between longer sections of previously published works, spanning from Gaitskill's first novel, Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991), through her novel in progress, End of Seasons. The manuscript is color-coded in tones of orange and red which fluctuate page by page (orange for excerpted work; red for Ginger's story and literary commentary by the author). 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; however, the total impact of the book is hard to describe. Devotees of Gaitskill's work are likely to appreciate the opportunity to revisit her masterworks on something of a guided tour where the author herself is able to instruct us that she is not "captivated" by cruelty, as has sometimes been said, but rather, "stunned by the omnipresence of cruelty, by the senselessness of its infliction, and at the same time by its seeming inevitability, its naturalness, its apparently primary place in our human nature." Those new to her work would be better served to start at the beginning and work their way up to this more impressionistic construction. The book rewards those looking for a deeper connection to Gaitskill's rigorous imagination. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.