Christine Pullein-Thompson

-

At last, at last, the Christine Pullein-Thompson bibliography is on the website. It has been an epic task, as she wrote over 100 pony books - surely the most of any pony book author? Unless Bonnie Bryant of Saddle Club wrote more. And that would only be true if Bonnie Bryant is in fact one person rather than a load of different authors writing under that name.
Huge thanks to Dawn of Pullein-Thompson archive who has been the most fantastic help. It really would have been very difficult to do it without her, as she has a much keener eye for detail than me, and also has an amazing collection which she is very happy to plunder for photos.
Christine PT is though the Pullein-Thompson I am most ambivalent about. There are some titles of hers I absolutely love: The Horse Sale, Phantom Horse, I Rode a Winner, and now I am older and can cope with romance, The Impossible Horse, but there are some I find tricky. I think it's the way her characters' despair is so total. One minute they're quite cheerful, and the next it is utter doom and gloom. I found that my own emotional response to the story lagged behind the characters' and felt I couldn't quite keep pace with their dizzying plunges: the book I'm thinking of particularly here is A Pony in Distress, which I read quite recently. She also seems to make a very determined effort to make her characters outsiders and that perhaps pushes her writing further than she was comfortable with.
I wonder too if the reason why I find some of her books uncomfortable is because they stray outside my own comfort zone? The world some of her books describe, from the 1970s at least, seemed alien to me, but then thinking about it, I went to a comprehensive (albeit one that was a grammar school when I started it). However, we weren't poor, and I didn't live in the inner city until I was much older. Hmmm. I'm not sure I've come to any very useful conclusions there.

Comments

haffyfan said…
I think you may have hit the nail on the head...I have often wondered why I did not like so many of Christine's books whereas I love both her sisters works and I think it is because so many are ouside my comfort zone too. Her books are much 'darker' in undertone than her sisters and some are 'dark' to the point of distressing (Ponies in The Forest etc). I do love Phantom Horse, Black Pony Inn (although some of them are rather full of doom and gloom), The hunting trilogy and David and Pat trilogy though. The Impossible Horse didn't really leave any impression on me, I quite liked it but it didn't stand out as anything special, but I did only read it for the first time last year and all my favourites are books I loved growing up.
17 November 2007 at 18:23
pullein-thompson-archive said…
I agree with haffyfan, you have hit the nail on the head.

However, I think both the sisters are dark (it must be a twin thing), just that they tackle it in different ways. Diana is a bit more morbid, her books are full of accidents, and to a certain extent, deaths galore. Christine doesnt tackle death and accidents in quite the same frequency as Diana, but it's still there.

I am not familiar with "A Pony In Distress" (it's one I need to get hold of for myself), though.

I am a bit like you, it wasnt until this century (2001) I lived in a town, I spent my whole childhood in the country. My parents arent poor either, but not uber rich (never had a pony).
17 November 2007 at 23:16
Jane Badger said…
It's interesting both of you think the same. I don't feel the same way about Diana though and I guess from what you both say that neither of you do too. Maybe Diana's characters are a bit more accepting of what's happening to them? I'm thinking of This Pony is Dangerous where the heroine isn't cast into utter gloom by the situation with her parents. Christine's characters - well, some of them, I suppose - seem much more hopeless. Maybe I liked the fact Diana's characters fought back a bit more.

Haffyfan I do know what you mean about distressing. Follyfoot I always found very very hard to read - though I didn't mind Monica Dickens' World's End at all - in fact I loved them - and they have animals who are rescued. Maybe with Follyfoot there was an undertow of hopelessness to it all. I don't know. I must read them again and think about it!
18 November 2007 at 11:32
Jane Badger said…
Just had another thought. It would be interesting to know what Christine's sale figures were for her later books - whether they sold better than the earlier titles.
18 November 2007 at 11:33
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more