irenegro | Margaret Atwood

"But if Nell's mother knew about Gladys, maybe she would come up to the farm. Her mother had been a devoted horse person once, a long time ago. She'd had two horses of her own.

Was it conceivable that, with Gladys dangled like a lure in front of her, she might overcome her reservations - about Tig, about Nell, about their unorthodox living arrangements? Wouldn't she be tempted? Wouldn't she long to have one small idyllic canter out to the back field, for old times' sake, with Gladys's pony-sized legs going like an eggbeater? Wouldn't she want to know that Nell now loved-improbably, and at last - one of the same activities she herself had once loved?

Perhaps. But Nell had no way of knowing. She and her mother weren't exactly speaking. They weren't exactly not speaking, either. The silence that had taken the place of speech between them had become its own form of speech. In this silence, language was held suspended. It contained many questions, though no definite answers".

Прекрасный рассказ, скорее не о белой лошади по кличке Глэдис, а о людях, в чей круг она попала. Мастерски написанная история - читаешь и думаешь, ну, вот как можно вместить столько характеров и жизней в небольшой текст.