The Mare, Mary Gaitskill
The Mare, Mary Gaitskill
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The Mare

Author: Mary Gaitskill

Narrator: Kyla Garcia, Christa Lewis, Lloyd James, Nicol Zanzarella

Unabridged: 14 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/03/2015

Synopsis

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.

About Mary Gaitskill

Mary Gaitskill is an award–winning author. Because They Wanted To was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1998. Her novel Veronica was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award and named one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2005. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire, The Best American Short Stories (1993), and The O. Henry Prize Stories (1998). Her story “Secretary” was the basis for the film of the same name. She is a recipient of the 2018 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.

About Kyla Garcia

Kyla Garcia is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. Born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey, she discovered acting at the age of eight when she played Lady Macbeth in a children’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. She made her off-Broadway debut at fifteen when she played Dorothy in Oz: A Twisted Musical. Eleven years after she discovered her passion for acting, she would go on to play Lady Macbeth once again in London at the Globe Theatre, where she studied Shakespeare during her third year at Mason Gross School of the Arts. She received her BFA in acting from Rutgers University.

About Christa Lewis

Christa Lewis has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. She is a classically trained actress with a four-year conservatory training in voice and acting. She has a smart and funny vibe, but can also meet the moment in straightforward or somber works of nonfiction thanks to a seventeen-year stint as a newsreader. Christa speaks accent-free German fluently and offers a variety of believable accents and dialects. Her narrations are well received—there have been seven Earphones awards across a variety of genres—YA, literary fiction, biography and memoir—a 2019 SOVAS Voice Arts Award in Biography and two Audie nominations. Pippa Jayne was the Sultry Listeners’ Award Winner 2019 in the Erotica category.

About Lloyd James

Lloyd James (a.k.a. Sean Pratt) has been a working professional actor in theater, film, television, and voice-overs for more than thirty years. He has narrated over one thousand audiobooks and won numerous Earphones Awards and nominations for the Audie Award and the Voice Arts Award. He holds a BFA degree in acting from Santa Fe University, New Mexico. 

About Nicol Zanzarella

Nicol Zanzarella is an Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator and a theater and television actress. She has appeared in productions of Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, The Winter’s Tale, Cousin Bette, Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, and many others.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Hannah on May 09, 2017

Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend. Velveteen (Velvet) Vargas is an eleven-year-old Dominican girl from the inner city whose family signs up for the Fresh Air Fund, a program that pairs kids from Brooklyn with a host family in upstate New York. Ve......more

Goodreads review by Ron on November 10, 2015

In the twilight of a year rich with books about race in America, Mary Gaitskill has just published a novel about the knee-smashing effects of minority poverty and the corrosive tonic of liberal guilt. “The Mare” is not a colossal epic of our era; its vision is precise; its protagonists — all female......more

Goodreads review by Carole on January 20, 2016

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life I didn't really know much about this story before I decided to give it a try. I think I really wanted to get lost in a story that was focused on a horse. I did end up getting completely pulled into this story but I quickly found out that this stor......more

Goodreads review by Maya on December 16, 2015

I stayed up until 4 a.m. reading this novel with the kind of "holy shit" urgency only the best writing can make you feel. I've since recommended it left and right and pressed it into friends' hands with an emphatic, "You HAVE to read this." Don't look up what the novel is about and don't read the su......more

Quotes

“Remarkably tender, though thankfully not sentimental…A truthful meditation on the limits of birth and motherhood, surrogate motherhood, and mothering yourself.” Entertainment Weekly

“A novel whose short chapters, told from shifting points of view, make it ideal for reading aloud.” New York Times

“A 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.” NPR

“The juxtaposition of these women’s lives…is dramatic. It’s an education to see how different life looks filtered through the lens of privilege, race, and age.” Los Angeles Times

“Bracing in its rigorous truth seeking, subtle and capacious in its moral vision, Gaitskill’s work feels more real than real life.” Boston Globe

“A rich back-and-forth narrative that encompasses falling in love, growing up, and doing right in worlds of privilege and poverty.” Bust

“National Book Award finalist Gaitskill takes a premise that could have been preachy, sentimental, or simplistic…and makes it candid and emotionally complex, spare, real, and deeply affecting. Gaitskill explores the complexities of love (mares, meres…) to bring us a novel that gallops along like a bracing bareback ride on a powerful Thoroughbred.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Four excellent narrators tell Velvet’s 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 Velvet…When Velvet’s abusive but loving mother makes a rare appearance, it’s memorable. At times, listeners will be wondering which character is telling the truth—and hoping that Velvet will make the right decisions in the end. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“In soaring language that well captures being ‘in the zone,’ whether it’s painting or riding, Gaitskill brings home her theme of the importance of honoring one’s gifts and the hard work of finding the best outlet for creative expression.” Booklist

“The Mare ripples with internal emotional movement, but it is also a physical novel…An exciting read.” New York Review of Books

Awards

  • Amazon Best Book of the Month
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • AudioFile Editors’ Pick
  • Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books
  • New York Times Book Review Notable Book
  • New York Times   Bestseller
  • New Yorker Best Book
  • NPR Best Book
  • Kirkus Reviews Pick
  • Baileys’ Women’s Prize for Fiction
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