Horse at Night: On Writing

Without planning it, I wrote a diary of sorts. Lightly. A diary of fiction. Or is that not what this is?

Essayistic inquiries come together into a sustained meditation on writers and their works, on the spaces of reading and writing fiction, and how these spaces take shape inside a life.

In A Horse at Night, Amina Cain contemplates how to be honest, open and free, as a person and a writer, even (and perhaps especially) during a time of great change. She moves elegantly through a personal canon of authors – including Marguerite Duras, Elena Ferrante and Annie Ernaux – and topics as timely and various as female friendships, neighbourhood coyotes, landscape painting and the politics of excess, to profound and joyous effect.

An individual reckoning with the contemporary moment and a quietly brilliant contribution to the lineage of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own or William H. Gass’s On Being Blue, A Horse at Night is a virtuosic argument for – and beautiful demonstration of – the essential unity of writing and life.

‘Stunning; unbelievably subtle, precise, & intelligent about writing, creativity & art making more widely.’ --Rebecca Tamás, author of Strangers

‘A Horse at Night is a thing of rare beauty. A book to make you fall in love with the life of a real or imagined writer in a way that feels completely fresh – I love it!’ --Susan Finlay