The Mare Audiobook

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)

• “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