Don't Cry

''A writer of prodigious gifts'' GuardianFull of jagged, complex emotion and powerful, incisive writing, the stories in Don''t Cry are a testament to Mary Gaitskill''s incomparable excavation of c ...

''A writer of prodigious gifts'' GuardianFull of jagged, complex emotion and powerful, incisive writing, the stories in Don''t Cry are a testament to Mary Gaitskill''s incomparable excavation of character. ''An Old Virgin'' describes a nurse''s obsession with her forty-three-year-old patient''s virginity; ''Folk Song'' dissects the lives of people behind newspaper headlines, including a murderer who gives a prime-time interview and a woman attempting to break a world record by having sex with one thousand men; in the title story ''Don''t Cry'', a grieving widow reflects on her marriage whilst