Because They Wanted To - Penguin Modern Classics (Paperback)

I really admire how Mary Gaitskill is willing to think about the problematic with complexity and humanity, and without taking sides or engaging in all the fashionable moral hectoring that passes for serious thought these days. -- Eimear McBride
Gaitskill shares Edith Wharton's forensic awareness of what happens just beneath the surface of high-toned encounters in public places * Independent *
Gaitskill's brand of brainy lyricism, of acid shot through with grace, is unlike anyone else's. And it constitutes some of the most incisive fiction writing around -- Meghan O'Rourke * New York Times Book Review *
What makes her exciting is her ability to evoke the hidden life, the life unseen, the life we don't even know we are living. -- Parul Sehgal * The New York Times Magazine *