The Mare

2017 Longlist

When Velveteen Vargas, an eleven-year-old Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn, comes to stay with a family in upstate New York, what begins as a two-week visit blossoms into something much more significant. Soon Velvet finds herself torn between her host family-Ginger, a failed artist and shakily recovered alcoholic; and Paul, a college professor-and her own deeply tormented mother. The one constant becomes Velvet’s newly discovered passion for horse riding-and especially for an abused, unruly mare named Fugly Girl. A stirring and deeply felt novel, The Mare is Mary Gaitskill’s most poignant and powerful work yet-a stunning exploration of a girl and her horse, and of the way we connect with people from all walks of life.

(from publisher)

About the author

Mary Gaitskill is the author of the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To (nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award), and Don’t Cry, and the novels Veronica (nominated for a National Book Award) 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.

Librarian’s Comments

Complex and challenging characters illuminate this story of the best (white liberal) intentions gone awry. When a well-to-do woman opens her home to an underprivileged Dominican girl, her self-congratulations are overwhelmed by obsession, guilt and confusion.