A man tells a story to a woman sitting beside him on a plane, little suspecting what it reveals about his capacity for cruelty and contempt. A callow runaway girl is stranded in a strange city with another woman’s fractiously needy children. An uncomprehending father helplessly lashes out at the daughter he both loves and resents. In these raw, startling, and incandescently lovely stories, the author of

Veronica

yields twelve indelible portraits of people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know.

Because They Wanted To

is further evidence that Gaitskill is one of the fiercest, funniest, and most subversively compassionate writers at work today.