Dr. Leo Liebenstein, a psychiatrist, begin to find his wife, Rema, who he believes has been replaced by a simulacrum. Besides his wife one of his patients, Harvey, is also missing. Harvey is the one who is convinced he receives coded messages from Royal Academy of Meteorology to control the weather. In searching his wife, Dr. Leo quests through Buenos aires and Patagonia. The story is very heartbreaking and maddening, adventurous with flashback nostalgia scenes.
Mary Gaitskill has a reputation as the chronicler of bad relationships, but that label doesn't do justice to the stories she tells. Her relationships turn bad, or turn good, or just turn (and turn and turn). In every exploitation there's an attraction, or at least an accommodation; in every hostility there's a yearning for, or at least a memory of, connection. You see the intensity of people--friends and family as well as lovers--drawn together, and the often equally intense emptiness when the magnet flips and repels. Gaitskill is one of our best short story writers (that's a label that's fully just) and the prickly, sad brilliance of her last book, Veronica, confirmed her as a master of the novel, too. Don't Cry is just her third story collection in 20 years, after the modern classics Bad Behavior and Because They Wanted To, and it reminds you immediately of why you've been longing to read her again. Once more, there are former lovers and ex-friends and par...
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