Veronica by Mary Gaitskill

I am slowly (very slowly) working my way through books on the New York Times Best 100 Books of the 21st Century that I had not read when it came out, and this is one of them. I was unfamiliar with the author, but she is apparently known for her attention to sex at the fringes and the people who live there. Allison is the heroine and the book vacillates between where she is now and where she once was. She is a former model now in her late 40's, and haunted by her friendship with Veronica, an older woman who died of AIDS. Alison herself has hepatitis C now and cleans offices. Once beautiful, she has not aged well. She lived fast and hard and it shows. She takes fistfuls of codeine so she can move her arm, injured in a car accident, enough to be able to wash windows as part of her job. It is hard for her to reconcile her decrepitude with her glittering memories of being a model in Paris -- a life that crashed to a close after an affair with a powerful, corrupt agent ended badly. This is a cautionary tale, what could happen if you grasp at the brass ring and slip badly in pursuit of it. It is tightly written and all too believable.