These are difficult stories, but they are not relentlessly sordid. Suffering is everywhere, and Gaitskill's humane impulse is to ask us not to turn away. How much more callous is the exhortation "Don't cry." That's like asking us not to acknowledge what we see. I don't think, as some would have it, that Gaitskill's characters are victims of her pitiless gaze, trapped under the magnifying glass of her voyeurism. She follows them out into the world with an unembarrassed tenderness, a compassionate witness to the terrible trials she puts them through.
MARY GAITSKILL | Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Ave, Brookline | May 6 at 7 pm | 617.566.6660
Related:
Turning feminist theory into a visceral rape deterrent, In his new graphic novel, Craig Thompson wins an argument with God, Review: Straw Dogs, More 
- Turning feminist theory into a visceral rape deterrent
In Africa, your vagina can get spikes for $2. No longer just a revenge dream, this device — called Rape-aXe — was actually distributed for free last year at the World Cup in South Africa.
- In his new graphic novel, Craig Thompson wins an argument with God
This book is a gorgeous object; to make it, Thompson apparently covered himself in honey and rolled around in a thousand years of Arabic calligraphy and Islamic art, and the result is breathtaking — the amount of ink expended on one resplendent panel after another, not to mention the virtuoso draftsmanship, speaks of hundreds of hours of hard work.
- Review: Straw Dogs
Remaking, polishing, and in effect housebreaking what should've remained untamed and feral, Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic follows the original's story beats closely, and so the devil is in the details.
- Review: Weekend
Among the world's masterpieces of misanthropy, Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 opus follows a loathsome, greedy, sexually perverse bourgeois married couple on a weekend jaunt into the French countryside during which they plan to murder the wife's dying father, and then, perhaps, turn viciously on each other.
- Review: Where Do We Go Now?
Lebanese director Nadine Labaki's whimsical film about internecine slaughter has a tone problem from the very start: a group of widows engage in a goofy line dance while the voiceover narrator bewails the death toll of religious warfare.
- Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
The franchise that began as a tame kiddie pleaser about four pampered zoo animals lost in the wild has matured and sharpened its teeth, perhaps thanks to Noah Baumbach ( The Squid and the Whale ) collaborating on the script.
- Review: Max Payne 3
Max Payne 3 makes video-game violence mean something again.
- Review: Whore's Glory
Austrian documentarian Michael Glawogger takes his camera into three pitiable spots where there is open prostitution, and where painted ladies, desperate for a living wage, service the most craven clientele.
- Is shooting people causing you legal problems?
Self-defense doesn't end when their life does!
- Review: The Matchmaker
Arik (Tuval Shafir), a restless Israeli teenager, struggles against the cultural limits of Haifa in 1968 — it's a provincial prism untouched by rock music or the sexual revolution.
- Review: 5 Broken Cameras
Emad Burnat, a Palestinian villager, goes through five different cameras from 2005 to 2010, each one broken when the Israeli military or police assault him as he tries to record the ongoing turmoil.
- Less
Topics:
Books
, The Beatles, Addis Ababa, Ann Arbor, More
, The Beatles, Addis Ababa, Ann Arbor, Adoption, violence, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Gaitskill, sex, Brookline Booksmith, Less
