Bad Behavior
  • Published: 30 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241383100
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $22.99

Bad Behavior

Formats & editions
Paperback
30 May 2019
EBook
2 May 2019
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The bestselling 1988 collection of short stories exploring the inner lives of men and women, ambiguity and unease in relationships, and the cruelty we inflict on one another

A young woman anxiously waits for her date on a street corner in New York City; he sits in a pizza parlour across the street, watching her discomfort.

A middle-aged woman returns to a New York that is haunted by the passion and intensity of her former relationship with her estranged best friend.

A secretarial graduate starts her first job at a lawyer's office and quietly keeps her cruel experiences at his hands locked inside herself.

The stories in this collection peer deep into the inner lives of men and women, explore the cavernous spaces between what we say and what can be expressed, and are full of tenderness and cruelty. Published for the first time in Penguin Modern Classics, Bad Behaviour provides a devastatingly insightful and urgently necessary view of our times.
  • Published: 30 May 2019
  • ISBN: 9780241383100
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $22.99
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Also by Mary Gaitskill

Secretary
Two Girls, Fat and Thin
Because They Wanted To
Veronica
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Praise for Bad Behavior

Razor-sharp brilliance

D. M. Thomas

Stubbornly original, with a sort of rhythm and fine moments that flatten you out when you don't expect it, these stories are a pleasure to read

Alice Munro

Pinteresque...Ms. Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail, that she is able to make even the most extreme situations seem real...[her] reportorial candor, uncompromised by sentimentality or voyeuristic charm...underscores the strength of her debut

Michiko Kakutani

Quite honestly changed my life... I cannot believe I was 32 before I discovered it. I just thought it was one of the most amazing things I'd ever read and it now lives on my desk so that I can revisit it any time

Pandora Sykes, The High Low

Delicious . . . comedy is balanced by genuine pathos, and Gaitskill is perceptive about how our desires can elude and confound even ourselves . . . Gaitskill masters human dynamics: the nuance of her portrayal of emotion and psychology; the daring of her selection of challenging subjects and people; the quality of her prose, with its occasional flights of gorgeous imagery . . . Her stories portray oddballs and free spirits on the fringes of 80s New York, often embroiled in complex sexual or romantic lives

Matt Rowland Hill, i, The book I read every New Year