PBOTD 13th November: Christine Pullein-Thompson - The Impossible Horse

-
The Impossible Horse (1957) is in some ways an odd book. My first experience of it was the Dragon paperback pictured below, with the author's name as Christine Pullein-Thompson. Originally, however, the book was published under the pseudonym Christine Keir. The book was something of a departure from Christine's previous work, which featured teenagers fighting against adversity. The big difference was romance: when I read her earlier David and Pat series, I'd wondered if there might be some romance between the two, but there's nothing, not a scrap. The idea of it is there, as Pat's sent off to be a debutante and have a London season. The entire reasoning behind one's season was to find a suitable husband, but this is never mentioned explicitly. 


So, it was under a pseudonym that Christine first introduced romance. Heroine Jan has left school and has started up a business re-schooling horses. One of her clients is the handsome Benedictine, who, too much for the girl to whom he was sold, reared and came over backwards with her. Jan is convinced he can be rehabilitated, and the book sees her doing this, interwoven with her nascent romance with the handsome Guy. This book was utter manna to me: horses, and romance, plenty of one and not too much of the other. 



~  0  ~

More on Christine Pullein-Thompson

Comments

Oonagh said…
Oh my. I read this book when I was about 14 or 15 and it was one that always stuck in my mind. I was searching to find the book recently and only came across it yesterday online. I am now 59.I moved to the country from suburbia 19 years ago and going trecking near my house it reminded me of an illustration in the book of Jan (only know the name now after reading this) on her horse and beyond the fields a church spire in the distance and I just thought this is it! I am where I'm supposed to be! I did remember that her love interest was called Guy! I now have to get a copy of the book and read it again 40 odd years later!
27 August 2023 at 17:14
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