Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

The skeleton of the book follows Alison as she goes to a cleaning job, complains of pains, and tells us she is suffering from incurable hepatitis. Feverish, she walks in the rain and recounts her life, focusing much of the story on an unlikely friendship she struck up after her spectacular rise – and fall – at the pinnacle of the fashion world in Paris. Back in New York, she takes a night temp job proofreading. Veronica, who is described throughout the book in garish terms, has died of Aids. Alison uses her memories to come to terms with the death of her friend.

The story revolves around our perception of beauty – the super model – and the ugly backstory of that life. Alison tells of a career begun on her back – and the degrading role sexual encounters play in the world of glamour. We see a woman who is constantly praised for her beauty, yet who does not accept her beauty or the true beauty in her friend Veronica.

The lack of love shown in the degrading sexual liaisons and a lack of understanding of true love becomes the core of the story. Alone and broken, no longer beautiful, Alison finally sees the love around her she never recognized. The opera “Rigoletto,” used at first as a reference to Veronica’s favorite song, becomes a framework for the story.

Gaitskill’s static, but beautifully imagined, present narration flows continually into flashback, giving the arc of the story. Her prose shows us beauty through words, at times seeming more an extended prose poem than novel. “They were stout and barrel-chested, with a damp, testicular air that was wounded and bellicose and longed to be loved.” The air is “prickled with wind chimes.” As Alison and her father listen to Rigoletto, “Loud voices leapt in declarative oblongs, then divided into fine, vibrant strands of delicacy and strife; father and daughter sang against each other.” Alison hears the story of the opera from her father “as if the idea of a daughter’s honor was like a precious jewel to him, a jewel the world no longer valued.” It is these jewels that retain their value and that make this a remarkable novel that sees beneath the veneer of mere beauty to love.