Mary Gaitskill's tales of desire and dislocation in 1980s New York caused a sensation with their frank, caustic portrayals of men and women's inner lives. As her characters have sex, try and fail to

`I don`t know why I behaved the way I did, and I kept doing it, he kept doing it. And though I might once have easily brushed it away, suddenly I could not. Nor could I confront him. The conversation

A writer engulfed by a new obsession, an occasional sex-worker, a runaway, a teenager entering the workplace: these four tales of desire and dislocation explore the rough edges of relationships and t