Because They Wanted To

Effectively written but ultimately boring stories about scuzzy people you'd avoid in real life - although there's little risk of that as none of the characters are remotely believable.

These stories are well-written and intelligent. Gaitskill makes rather a speciality of the farther reaches of sex in them. You don't really like the protagonists who are mostly needy, entitled or just strange. There's one particularly horrid story called The Dentist

this is brilliant insight into relationships

Chaque histoire nous laisse toiujours réfléchir. Desfois même mal à l'aise

Hey, all you Mary hatahs in the one star club -- didn't you get that half the time the author was poking fun at her characters, maybe the self that inspired them, and the simplistic solutions of nineties therapy culture?The Dentist is a good example, wherein a thirty-something intellectual writer and former sex-worker develops an outsized, almost childish crush on the kind, bland dentist who first inflicts pain, then tries to makes it right. She doesn't know how to accept his simple good will -- in lending her a computer when hers busts on deadline, in meeting her for nonphysical dates, and insisting he needs to know a person better before getting physically involved.Ex-junkie friends living on public assistance offer expert advice: He won't ___ you? 's He's sick! He's ___ing with your head!Honestly -- if you've ever had a girlfriend who just doesn't get that he's not into her -- it's the same story, and it's funny that M.G.'s characters, with their dense sexual histories, are really just like everyone else when it comes to unrequited love.The title story about a teenage runaway is poignant and not completely without redemption. It's realistic, it doesn't end on a dark note at all, but with some sense of progress and connection.The last group of stories, The Wrong Thing seems to represent a coming of maturity and moving on -- as if the dizzy characters of Bad Behavior are finally finding ways to work out their kinks (!) and find some peace in the world.The Girl on the Plane -- told from the point of view of a man who took part in the gang bang of an alcoholic friend -- isn't funny -- but it's very real, and breathtaking.