Winner of the Mslexia First Novel Competition, this is a tender, funny, and life-affirming love story between a woman and a horse.

'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.

"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" - 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" - 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" - 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" - author of Ways of Living

"Finely observed and exquisitely written... A wonderful and surprising work that goes to the heart and stays there" - author of Ode to Joy

"A moving love story that gallops across the species divide, and yet somehow leaves the reader clearer in their humanity" - author of Weathering and Grounded