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The Mare

The Mare

A Novel

by Mary Gaitskill
Hardback
Publication Date: 03/11/2015

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Following her National Book Award-nominated Veronica, here is Mary Gaitskill's most poignant and powerful work yet--the story of a Dominican girl, the Anglo woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for her.

Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist and shakily recovered alcoholic, and her academic husband, Paul, who wonder what it will mean to "make a difference" in such a contrived situation. Gaitskill illuminates their shifting relationship with Velvet over several years, as well as Velvet's encounter with the horses at the stable down the road--especially with an abused, unruly mare called Fugly Girl. With strong supporting characters--Velvet's abusive mother, an eccentric horse trainer, a charismatic older boy who awakens Velvet's nascent passion--The Mare traces Velvet's journey between the vital, violent world of the inner city and the world of the small-town stable.

In Gaitskill's hands, the timeless story of a girl and a horse is joined with a timely story of people from different races and classes trying to meet one another honestly. The Mare is raw, heart-stirring, and original.

ISBN:
9780307379740
9780307379740
Category:
Contemporary fiction
Format:
Hardback
Publication Date:
03-11-2015
Language:
English
Publisher:
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Country of origin:
United States
Dimensions (mm):
234.95x156.21x35.81mm
Weight:
0.8kg
Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To, and Don't Cry, and the novels Veronica, The Mare and Two Girls Fat and Thin. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories, and the O. Henry Prize Stories.

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