In this seductive and shattering novel, Alison and Veronica meet amid the nocturnal glamour of 1980s New York: one is a former modeling sensation, stumbling away from the wreck of her career, the other an eccentric middle-aged proofreader with a meticulous eye. Over the next twenty years their friendship will encompass narcissism and tenderness, exploitation and self-sacrifice, love and mortality.
Moving seamlessly between the glamorous and gritty '80s, when beauty and style gave licence to excess and the broken world of the decade's survivors twenty years after, Gaitskill casts a fierce yet compassionate eye on the two eras and their fixations. Veronica masterfully evokes the fragility and mystery of human relationships in a world where love is rife with contradictions. Evocative, raw, and entirely unique, Veronica was shortlisted for the prestigious 2005 National Book Award in the USA.
“Gatiskill is enormously gifted. . . . [Veronica] is a masterly examination of the relationship between surface and self, culture and fasion, time and memory." —The New York Times Book Review
"Gaitskill has written a novel that will leave you shaking and joyful simultaneously, dizzy with the proximity of private terror and bottomless hope." —O, The Oprah Magazine
“Twisted, beautiful, grotesque, graceful, and exceedingly well-executed. People write their whole lives in the hope of coming up with just one sentences that rises to the level of this book.” —The Sunday Oregonian
“Gaitskill taps into a deeper vein of emotional force, and with vivid language and an absorbing architecture, she delivers her most affecting, sophisticated work to date.” —The Boston Globe
“Beautiful, devastating. . . . Gaitskill devotes almost religious attention to language and to our failure to make our lives as grand as the art we love. There are paragraphs like poems in Veronica that lure you back, over and over.” —Elle
"Gaitskill writes so radiantly about violent self-loathing that the very incongruousness of her language has shocking power." —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"Sensuous and precise. . . . Veronica captures the nexus between the erotic glamour [of the 1980's] and its epic heartlessness." —Entertainment Weekly
"Gaitskill writes from the gut . . . [Her] characters bleed, sweat, cry, and they experience sadness, anger and love as much as a physical sensation as an emotion." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Gaitskill's style is gorgeously caustic . . . Her ability to capture abstract feelings and sensations with a prescise and unexpected metaphor is a squirmy delight to encounter in such abundance." —Heidi Julavits, Pubishers Weekly
“[Veronica] creates an atmosphere, provokes a response, and suffuses us with an emotion that we can easily, all too easily, summon up. It's art that you can continue to see even with your eyes closed." —Francine Prose, Slate
