Veronica

"Dubbed “the Jane Austen of sickos” for her caustic, darkly comic portrayals of the emotional brutality humans endure (and often inflict on one another), Mary Gaitskill rose to prominence again this year for her widely read #MeToo story “ This is Pleasure ”—recommended in book form by Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn in her yearly picks . After inhaling that and her acclaimed short story collection Bad Behavior , I tracked down the early novel Veronica on the recommendation of my friend Merve Emre and wasn’t disappointed. Set in the 1980s, it tells the story of the friendship between Alison, a former model now in her 40s, and Veronica, a professional proofreader desperately in love with a bisexual man, whose transmitted AIDS virus ultimately kills her. Gaitskill delights in peeling back the skins of her suffering, often nasty characters and showing you the vulnerable, frail human beings desperate for love underneath. There’s nothing quite like this book. There was a lot of fiction I loved this year, though, and maybe another title on my list might grab your attention. Vying for this spot are: A novelistic work of narrative nonfiction on desire and the failure of love for three real-life women; I reviewed it for Five Books here . An erotic and erudite (don’t often see those words together, do you?) campus novel that turns the professor-sleeping-with-his-student trope on its head by depicting a love affair between a female graduate student and her professor’s wife. This is where to start with Colette, though the late novel The Pure and Impur e is also great. Lush, desirous, beautiful, French. I lost myself in this. Another NYRB Classics I’d never heard of before picking up, this one captures the psychic disintegration of a married woman in sessions with her therapist. It’s the sentiment of Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” in book form—in other words, sublime. A short novella that was out of print but has been reissued this year. An erotic thriller about a divorced NYU professor whose adventures in sex get tangled up with murderous violence. Weird, dark, sexy, disturbing. Recommend. Regardless of his politics, it’s impossible to deny the appeal of the boundless comic energy of Portnoy . The book is comprised of a young man’s monologue to his therapist. You might hate him, but you’ll love the book and be sad when it ends. A nimble domestic novel with achingly beautiful passages of prose, language distilled to its purest form. Themes include the bonds of family, the way music is embedded in all of us, the return of old flames, the visceral desire for love and belonging. Very short and can be read in an afternoon."