The Mare
- Author Mary Gaitskill
- Narrator Kyla Garcia, Christa Lewis, Lloyd James, Nicol Zanzarella, various
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date 3 November 2015
- Run Time 14 hours and 40 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Coming of age.
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What to expect
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.
Critics Review
u201cRemarkably tender, though thankfully not sentimentalu2026A truthful meditation on the limits of birth and motherhood, surrogate motherhood, and mothering yourself.u201d
u201cA novel whose short chapters, told from shifting points of view, make it ideal for reading aloud.u201d
u201cA 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.u201d
u201cThe juxtaposition of these womenu2019s livesu2026is dramatic. Itu2019s an education to see how different life looks filtered through the lens of privilege, race, and age.u201d
u201cBracing in its rigorous truth seeking, subtle and capacious in its moral vision, Gaitskillu2019s work feels more real than real life.u201d
u201cA rich back-and-forth narrative that encompasses falling in love, growing up, and doing right in worlds of privilege and poverty.u201d
u201cNational Book Award finalist Gaitskill takes a premise that could have been preachy, sentimental, or simplisticu2026and makes it candid and emotionally complex, spare, real, and deeply affecting. Gaitskill explores the complexities of love (mares, meresu2026) to bring us a novel that gallops along like a bracing bareback ride on a powerful Thoroughbred.u201d
u201cFour excellent narrators tell Velvetu2019s 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 Velvetu2026When Velvetu2019s abusive but loving mother makes a rare appearance, itu2019s memorable. At times, listeners will be wondering which character is telling the truthu2014and hoping that Velvet will make the right decisions in the end. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.u201d
u201cIn soaring language that well captures being u2018in the zone,u2019 whether itu2019s painting or riding, Gaitskill brings home her theme of the importance of honoring oneu2019s gifts and the hard work of finding the best outlet for creative expression.u201d
u201cThe Mare ripples with internal emotional movement, but it is also a physical novelu2026An exciting read.u201d
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