Review: Jane Smiley - Champion Horse

-
Champion Horse is the fourth in the Abby Lovitt series, set in 1960s America. Abby’s father buys horses, and sells them after Abby’s schooled them. Abby herself has changed her view of this over the series. It’s been difficult for her, falling for horses who are then sold, but she does now have her own horse.



I’ve enjoyed the other books in the series; mainly for their unhurried pace and their careful portraits of the horses Abby rides. This book I found much more of a slow burn. Abby is a remote character, an observer rather than one who instigates anything, and for the first half of this book she’s observing to such an extent she rather lost me. I longed for the book to if not catch fire, at least to do something that would encourage me to enter Abby’s world because I cared about her and what she was doing. Fortunately, half way through, things pick up.

The book opens with Abby riding her horse, Blue, in shows, and it is not going well at all. Abby takes Blue to a clinic run by an ex-Olympian, and that doesn’t go well either. The trainer suggests Abby gives Blue a hit with the stick to focus his mind, but as Blue’s already nervous, that tactic doesn’t work. The trainer’s tactics are no better suited to the human participants either: star rider Sophia, who bought Black George from Abby earlier in the series, is reduced to tears, and walks out. She doesn’t get back on again, and Abby is offered the ride on Sophia’s other horse, Pie in the Sky.

Abby gets on well with him, but feels that he could be even better if he’s encouraged to free jump and play, as she’s seen a family called the Carmichaels do. The description of exactly how this all takes place is involving, and as Abby’s interest levels raised, so did mine. Abby is still very much the passive person she always was, but this book does see her start to make her own decisions and drive the plot along. It’s difficult to write a passive character and make the reader care about what happens to her; but the resolution of Abby’s problems sets the next book up with new relationships for Abby, and also the prospect of tension and grief if her brother Danny’s drafted for Vietnam.

There’s still enough in this book to make me look forward to the next volume, but I’m hoping that Abby carries on at least being semi-engaged with the world around her. It would be a shame if this series withered through the reader failing to care enough to reach out and make the effort to enter Abby’s world.

~  0  ~

Jane Smiley – Champion Horse
Faber, 2013, £6.99
Orginally published as Pie in the Sky, Alfred Knopf, 2012
Age of main character: 13/14

Jane Smiley’s website
Jane Smiley on my website

Comments

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