The Mare
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
'Bold, dramatic and deeply unsettling' Guardian
When Velveteen Vargas, an eleven-year-old Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn, comes to stay with a couple in upstate New York, what begins as a two-week visit blossoms into something much more significant. Soon Velvet finds herself torn between her hosts - Ginger, a failed artist and shakily recovered alcoholic and Paul, a college professor - and her own tormented mother.
Ginger longs for a child of her own, but Paul continues to refuse. 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. Velvet's one constant becomes her newly discovered passion for horse riding, and her affection for an abused, unruly mare.
A profound and stirring novel about how love and family are shaped by place, race and class, The Mare is a stunning exploration of the sometimes unexpected but profound connections made throughout our lives.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Nothing is entirely what it seems in Mary Gaitskill's emotionally charged novel. The book’s heroines are a modern-day Orphan Annie reimagined as a Dominican girl from a tough neighborhood and her white benefactor, a failed artist with a troubled past. We love Gaitskill's deceptively simple staccato sentences, which helped us navigate a labyrinth of increasingly complicated emotional entanglements. She doles out blunt, hard-hitting commentary on race and class privilege, while also exposing her characters’ most secret and most selfish desires in a way that kept us turning the pages.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this novel by National Book Award finalist Gaitskill (Veronica), 11-year-old Dominican-American Velveteen "Velvet" Vargas from Crown Heights in Brooklyn is invited to spend a few weeks with a white couple in upstate New York as part of the Fresh Air Fund sponsorship program. The demure and self-possessed girl is skeptical of the situation at first, but as she continues to visit over the next three years, she develops a relationship with Ginger an ex-addict and amateur artist and Ginger's professor husband, Paul, as well as with the horses at a nearby stable. True to form, as Velvet learns to trust her instinct and develops a talent for riding a feisty horse she renames Fiery Girl, her confidence soars. But problems arise when Velvet hits puberty and discovers boys: Velvet's single mother, fierce and prone to violence, refuses to allow Velvet to ride and repeatedly calls her worthless, while Ginger goes off the rails dealing with her own insecurities. Gaitskill is renowned for her edgy writing, but the book narrated by different characters treads into stereotype. More nuanced portrayals might have made Velvet's bumpy growth into an independent young woman more palatable.
