Summary

Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award

Longlisted for the 2017 Baileys’ Women’s Prize for Fiction

One of the New Yorker’s Best Books of 2015

A 2015 New York Times Book Review Notable Book

A New York Times Editor’s Choice

An NPR Best Book of 2015

An Amazon Best Book of the Month for November 2015

An AudioFile Editors’ Pick

One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2015

A Kirkus Reviews Pick for 10 Characters You Won't Soon Forget

From the author of Veronica, a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction, comes Mary Gaitskill’s most poignant and powerful work yet: the story of a Dominican girl, the white woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for her.

Velveteen Vargas is an eleven-year-old from Brooklyn who is granted a summer vacation in the country, courtesy of the nonprofit Fresh Air Fund. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist on the fringe of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Paul, an academic who wonders what it will mean to “make a difference” in such a contrived situation. Here we see the couple’s changing relationship with Velvet over the course of several years, as well as Velvet’s powerful encounter with the horses at the stable down the road, as Gaitskill weaves together Velvet’s vital inner-city community and the privileged country world of Ginger and Paul.

The timeless story of a girl and a horse is joined with the story of people from different races and socioeconomic backgrounds trying to meet one another honestly. It is a novel that is raw, striking, and completely original.

Editorial Reviews

“Remarkably tender, though thankfully not sentimental…A truthful meditation on the limits of birth and motherhood, surrogate motherhood, and mothering yourself.” —Entertainment Weekly

“A novel whose short chapters, told from shifting points of view, make it ideal for reading aloud.” —New York Times

“The Mare ripples with internal emotional movement, but it is also a physical novel…An exciting read.” —New York Review of Books

“A raw, beautiful story about love and mutual delusion, in which the fierce erotics of mother love and romantic love and even horse fever are swirled together.” —NPR

“The juxtaposition of these women’s lives…is dramatic. It’s an education to see how different life looks filtered through the lens of privilege, race, and age.” —Los Angeles Times

“Bracing in its rigorous truth seeking, subtle and capacious in its moral vision, Gaitskill’s work feels more real than real life.” —Boston Globe

“A rich back-and-forth narrative that encompasses falling in love, growing up, and doing right in worlds of privilege and poverty.” —Bust

“National Book Award finalist Gaitskill takes a premise that could have been preachy, sentimental, or simplistic…and makes it candid and emotionally complex, spare, real, and deeply affecting. Gaitskill explores the complexities of love (mares, meres…) to bring us a novel that gallops along like a bracing bareback ride on a powerful Thoroughbred.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Four excellent narrators tell Velvet’s story through various points of view in alternating chapters. Each narrator perfectly defines the complexities of the character being portrayed, while showing different sides of Velvet…When Velvet’s abusive but loving mother makes a rare appearance, it’s memorable. At times, listeners will be wondering which character is telling the truth—and hoping that Velvet will make the right decisions in the end. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” —AudioFile

“In soaring language that well captures being ‘in the zone,’ whether it’s painting or riding, Gaitskill brings home her theme of the importance of honoring one’s gifts and the hard work of finding the best outlet for creative expression.” —Booklist

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Author Bio: Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is an award–winning author. Because They Wanted To was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1998. Her novel Veronica was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award and named one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2005. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). Her story “Secretary” was the basis for the film of the same name. She is a recipient of the 2018 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.

Titles by Author

Details

Format:	Retail CD	Format:	MP3 CD
Available Formats :	Retail CD, MP3 CD
Category:	Fiction/Literary
Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing	Publisher:	Blackstone Publishing
CDs:	12	CDs:	1
Runtime:	14.67
ISBN:	9781504671606	ISBN:	9781504671590
Audience:	Adult
Language:	English

The Mare

Summary

Summary

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

Reviews