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.
‘I’ve been finding myself returning again and again to [it], finding wisdom, beauty and recognition in [Cain’s] distilled observations on writing and making art.’ Sophie Mackintosh, author of Cursed Bread
‘Utterly compelling . . . Visionary and inspiring.’ Celia Paul
‘Amina Cain lays down the keys to her writing kingdom very quietly . . . I loved it.’ Roger Robinson, Books of the Year, New Statesman
‘An ideal corrective to slavishly tallying up the books we’ve read on Goodreads… an earnest and thoughtful celebration and exploration of the pleasures and powers of reading.’ Lunate
‘A constellation of lucid observations for both readers and writers.’ The Face magazine
‘Cain writes beautiful precise sentences about what it means to wander through this luminous world.’ Jenny Offill, author of Weather
‘Amina Cain is a phenomenal writer. I adore her work, and sensibility.’ Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Checkout 19
‘Stunning; unbelievably subtle, precise, & intelligent about writing, creativity & art making more widely.’ Rebecca Tamás, author of Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman
‘Nimble and deft, Amina Cain is a seamstress of thought, stitching exquisite creations of text as if from cloth. A Horse at Night is an exceptional book, a work of depth and elegance, with her bright intelligence threaded into its very seams.’ Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat
‘Lucid and precise, it feels instinctively like a very special literary work, and one to revisit again and again.’ Ana Kinsella, author of Look Here
‘Like light from a candle in the evening: intimate, pleasurable, full of wonder.’ Ayşegül Savaş, author of White on White
‘Astounding … I was distraught when I finished.’ Kerri Ní Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places
‘It was a joy to spend time in the company of the author’s elegant, wise voice. Many a sentence was underlined. It felt like some bizarre kind of manual.’ Sara Baume, author of handiwork
‘A masterful work about writing and reading, that feels like a manifesto and conversation all in one. Intimate, insightful and brilliant.’ Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations
‘A supple, beguiling treatise on the lifeblood of writerly craft. A perfectly whittled book I’ll hold close for years to come.’ Sue Rainsford, author of Follow Me to Ground
‘Amina Cain is an elegant writer, and A Horse at Night is an elegant book. Idiosyncratic yet tight, weird yet unpretentious, highbrow yet immediate – I read this book in one sitting, then immediately began again.’ Susan Finlay, author, poet, artist
‘A fascinating and generous book about reading and writing, about process and literary inspiration, about how we need darkness to see the light, and about the power of female solitude.’ Pragya Agarwal, author of (M)otherhood
‘Amina Cain has written a book that’s self-soluble, that thinks about its own dissolution as an artifact. Lol Stein takes her place beneath the rye, for example, and we know she’s there, an architecture of postures that works differently to the idea of shelter. Cain works precisely in this kind of space, between bodies and voids. Here, a reader can become a writer, too.’ Bhanu Kapil, author of How to Wash a Heart
‘This refined little book is a writer’s musings on making sense of one’s intuitions, experiences and feelings, inspired by reading and looking. [But] it is relevant to everyone who respects art and literature.’ Frances Borzello, author of Seeing Ourselves
‘This book has given me some of the purest literary joy I can remember. It is a stimulant, a delight and essential reading for anyone interested in writing and reading’ Stuart Evers, author of The Blind Light
‘Tender and intimate . . . a book that is as much about reading as about writing. For Cain, books are characters, friends, provocateurs, and reading a mental landscape through which she moves with a meandering, associative intent.’ Marina Benjamin, Books of the Year, New Statesman
