JUDITH FREEMAN (author of Red Waterand other novels)

Mary Gaitskill’sVeronica (Pantheon) is a harrowing, moving novel about a once-beautiful ex-model and her friendship with an older woman dying of AIDS. Youth and beauty, death and disease, friendship and its sometimes strange pairings. Gaitskill is brilliant at many things. Edgy, disturbing, powerful — Veronica is Gaitskill’s best thus far.