Author(s): Mary Gaitskill

Essay | Daunt Books Publishing

'Last year I lost my cat Gattino. He was very young, at seven months barely an adolescent. He is probably dead but I don't know for certain.'

So begins Mary Gaitskill's stunning long essay, the closest thing she has written to a memoir, about a lost cat and a pair of adopted children. In this searing piece about loss, love, safety and fear, Gaitskill applies her razor-sharp writing to her most personal subjects yet.

Author Biography: Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To (nominated for the PEN/ Faulkner Award), and Don't Cry, the novels The Mare, Veronica (nominated for the National Book Award), and Two Girls, Fat and Thin, and a collection of essays, Somebody With A Little Hammer. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Artforum, and Granta, among many other journals, as well as in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories.