The Mare - Hardcover

Gaitskill, Mary

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1781255938 ISBN 13: 9781781255933

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2016

Synopsis

Ginger is in her forties and a recovering alcoholic when she meets and marries Paul. When it becomes clear it's too late for her to have a baby of her own, she tries to persuade him to consider adoption, but he already has a child from a previous marriage and is ten years older than her, so doesn't share her longing to be a parent at any cost. As a compromise, they sign up to an organisation that sends poor inner-city kids to stay with country families for a few weeks in the summer, and so one hot July day eleven year old Velveteen Vargas, a Dominican girl from one of Brooklyn's toughest neighbourhoods, arrives in their lives, and Ginger is instantly besotted.

Bemused by her gentle middle-aged hosts, but deeply intuitive in the way of clever children, Velvet quickly senses the longing behind Ginger's rapturous attention. While Velvet returns her affection, she finds the intensity of it bewildering. Velvet's own passions are more excited by the stables nearby, where she discovers she has a natural talent for riding and a deep affinity with the damaged horses cared for there. But when Ginger begins to entertain fantasies of adopting her, things start to get complicated for everyone involved.

This is a heartbreakingly honest and profoundly moving portrait of the nearly unbridgeable gaps between people, and the way we long for fairytale endings despite knowing that they don't exist.

About this title

Review:

Visceral and haunting, and the telling, with its shifting first person narrative, is nothing short of masterful. (GQ)

A poignant, beautiful coming of age story about race, class and motherhood. (Woman and Home)

Gaitskill's work feels more real than real life and reading her leads to a place that feels like a sacred space. (Boston Globe)

Velvet is that most wonderful of fictional creations: a convincing child who manages to be a captivating and perceptive narrator. (New Yorker)

Gaitskill's novel is not a children's book, but it is a book about what children long for, and how we long for the same thing many years after we've left childhood behind (The New York Times)

A thoroughly compelling read ... redemptive and moving, The Mare offers as much fresh air for the author (and the reader) as it does for her characters. (Spectator)

Penetrating ... confronts, head-on, white privilege and black victimhood. (Daily Mail)

A timely examination of the pains and pleasures that follow one woman's attempt to bridge the yawning gap of understanding between two races. (Sunday Express)

Another document of America's fraught obsession with race but it manages to be moving. (Sunday Times)

Emotionally complex voices crafted with skill and sensitivity. (Mail on Sunday)

Book Description:

A profound, important novel about how love and family are shaped by place, race and class

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1781255938
• ISBN 13: 9781781255933
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448