Mare, The

Mare, The
Mary Gaitskill
RRP:
NZ$ 24.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 19.99
Paperback
h198 x 129mm - 448pg
11 Nov 2021 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781788168670
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
Ginger is forty-seven and a recovering alcoholic when she meets and marries Paul. It's too late for her to have a baby of her own, so she tries to persuade him to consider adoption, but he already has a child and doesn't share her longing to be a parent. 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, so one hot July day Velveteen Vargas arrives in their lives, and Ginger is instantly besotted. Velvet is an eleven-year-old Dominican girl from one of Brooklyn's toughest neighbourhoods. Bemused by her gentle middle-aged hosts, but deeply intuitive in the way of clever children, Velvet quickly senses the longing behind Ginger's affection for her. Although she can't reciprocate, the two of them do forge a bond, but when Ginger begins to entertain fantasies of adopting Velvet, things begin to get complicated. Narrated in turn by Velvet and Ginger, Mary Gaitskill has created a devastating portrait of the unbridgeable gaps between people, and the way we long for fairytale endings even when we know they don't exist. Heartbreakingly honest and utterly convincing, it marks her triumphant return.
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. Women 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 Her voice captures a child's mixture of insight and innocence ... As a model for getting back in contact with the natural world, this is a delirious dream. As an acknowledgment of what human beings fail to offer each other, it comes closer to being a nightmare. Times A novel about race, class and, as Gaitskill's convincingly drawn characters show how different worlds collide, the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the two in America. Daily Express The Mare is a dark, dreamlike novel, at times nightmarish, at others offering glimpses of the sublime, shocking in its raw depiction of violence, and beautiful in its evocation of flawed love. Financial Times
Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To, and Don't Cry, and the novels Veronica 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.
Status: Indicates in stock with Supplier
ISBN-13: 9781788168670
Published: 11 Nov 2021
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Serpent's Tail
Publisher: Profile Books
Format: Paperback
Height: 198mm
Width: 129mm
Pages: 448

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