Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Veronica cover art

Veronica

By: Mary Gaitskill
Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Shopgirl cover art
Monstrous Affections cover art
Fin & Lady cover art
Marrow cover art
Heaven Adjacent cover art
Backwards to Oregon cover art
The Elegance of the Hedgehog cover art

Summary

As a teenager on the streets of San Francisco, Alison is discovered by a photographer and swept into the world of fashion-modeling in Paris and Rome. When her career crashes and a love affair ends disastrously, she moves to New York City to build a new life. There she meets Veronica: an older wisecracking eccentric with her own ideas about style, a proofreader who comes to work with a personal "office kit" and a plaque that reads "Still Anal After All These Years".

Improbably, the two women become friends. Their friendship will survive not only Alison's reentry into the seductive nocturnal realm of fashion, but also Veronica's terrible descent into the then-uncharted realm of AIDS. The memory of their friendship will continue to haunt Alison years later, when she, too, is aging and ill and is questioning the meaning of what she experienced and who she became during that time.

Masterfully layering time and space, thought and sensation, Mary Gaitskill dazzles the listener with psychological insight and a mystical sense of the soul's hurtling passage through the world. A novel unlike any other, Veronica is a tour de force about the fragility and mystery of human relationships, the failure of love, and love's abiding power.

©2005 Mary Gaitskill (P)2006 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

  • National Book Award Finalist, Fiction, 2005
  • National Book Critics Circle Finalist, Fiction, 2005

"Elegiac, funny, and life affirming." (Booklist)
"Gaitskill's implacable refusal of sentimentality is her great strength: no group hugs here, just baleful understanding." (The Washington Post)
"Gaitskill is enormously gifted....Her palpable talent puts her among the most eloquent and perceptive contemporary fiction writers." (The New York Times Books Review)
"Gaitskill delivers her most affecting, sophistocated work to date." (The Boston Globe)
"A novel that will leave you shaking, and joyful simultaneously." (O, The Oprah Magazine)

More from the same

What listeners say about Veronica

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Decentred bodies

Traps of pain and perceived pleasures for women ungrounded, self loathing and love reflected, refracted.
A finely written, wandering book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!