Description

‘For a long time I had not been that person. For a long time horses had not occurred to me at all.’

For a long time, she and her husband have their dog and she almost certainly doesn’t want to have a child. But then the dog dies and she learns she can’t have a child even if she wanted to, and she begins to think about horses again. When she hears about a mare who needs looking after part-time, it sounds like an ideal arrangement. Something to care for two days a week, without getting in too deep. But as she brushes and feeds and rides the horse, affection grows into obsession and she must confront what it means to love a being who did not come from her body and who does not belong to her.

Emily Haworth-Booth’s award-winning debut novel is a bold and beautiful exploration of contemporary (non)motherhood and the surprising ways in which desire can enthral us and set us free.

Publisher Review

Incredible, wonderfully weird and thought-provoking. I loved its take on gender and physicality, and our proximity to the natural world — Natasha Onwuemezi Captivating and unique. A novel I had no idea I was yearning for until I started to read it. Mare is already the winner of a significant prize and deserves to become a classic — Sophie Hannah Immersive, tender, nuanced and radically attentive to the strangeness and wonder of human love – for each other, for a mouse, for a horse. A blissful read — Fiona Benson A bold, deft and deeply moving story about animal love and motherhood, and what it means to be devoted to another being. With extraordinary suppleness and an arresting lightness of touch, Haworth-Booth travels deep into the joys, mysteries and heartaches of relationships to reveal a vision of attachment that is startlingly lucid, and liberated. A daring book, and a brilliant one – a beautiful challenge for our times — Helen Jukes * author of Mother Animal * Emily Haworth-Booth writes the heartbreak of a body, of the world, of caring, with immense tenderness and humour. I loved the peripheries of solitude and communion traced in this wild, melancholy, marvellous novel — Aysegul Savas * author of The Anthropologists * What a special book! I love Emily’s funny, honest writing, so deeply particular and still profoundly relatable. She takes the knotty, strange thoughts that our minds catch on, daily, and makes them clear and beautiful — Lizzy Stewart * author of Walking Distance * An extraordinary, daring book… Haworth-Booth makes the private, mundane, knotty details of one woman’s days hum with life. In the quiet rituals of care – brushing, feeding, noticing – she finds a rhythm that is both tender and exacting. This is a novel about how we might express ourselves, if only we allowed ourselves that freedom. About ways of mothering, about friendship, about connecting to both the human and more-than-human world… Mare is precise, vital, utterly compelling. I loved it — Gemma Seltzer * author of Ways of Living * Finely observed and exquisitely written… A wonderful and surprising work that goes to the heart and stays there — Sophie Herxheimer * author of Ode to Joy * This intimate book is not a memoir, a treatise, a novel, a poem, a lyric essay, a lament, or a joke – but is also, excitingly, all of these things. It blurs the boundaries of genre, but also of species, bodies and gender… A gorgeous, generous work that is tough, vulnerable, and analytically sharp — Alison Winch A moving love story that gallops across the species divide, and yet somehow leaves the reader clearer in their humanity — Ruth Allen * author of Weathering and Grounded * I adore this book! Haworth-Booth is a stunningly clever writer! A tender, exhilarating and humorous exploration into female subjectivity, the body, animal instinct, and love, essentially, love — Rachel Long Warm and reflective, a novel that exists beautifully outside of human relationships, coming to rest instead on the love of a horse, and the vulnerability and strength of the animal and human body both — Amina Cain