Books, Mud and Compost. And Horses.

I’ve had this lurking on the Kindle for a while, but had forgotten about it until I was sitting at the vet’s with the cat. It’s a continuation of Josephine Pullein-Thompson’s Noel and Henry series, and as you’d expect from the title, looks at what happens now they’re at that interesting period between a secure school-based existence, and making their own lives. And thereby, I think, hangs whether you’re going to like this book or not. If you wonder what characters would be like outside the confines of a children’s book, then give this a go. I enjoyed it. If you’re not a fan of the Chalet Girls Grow Up kind of fanfic, which takes a set of beloved characters and gives them anything but the cosy existence they have in the books, then you’ll hate it. The action centres around the Holbrookes’ house again, over the Christmas holidays. Dick is back from Oxford, and finds his father has sold his pony, Crispin, brutally, and without letting him know, for meat. Noel is doing some rath...

Ah, Valegro. Superstar dressage horse who made all our hearts flutter in the last two Olympics. If you’ve ever wondered how Valegro started off, and what life is like if you’re a horse on Carl Hester’s yard (and indeed if you’re a dog, a guinea fowl, or a human) then this is the book for you. There’s not a great deal of narrative excitement in the book, as obviously we all know what’s going to happen. What we don’t know, however, is how Valegro got there, and that’s what this book covers – or at least his early life. The book is the first of a series and I admit I am looking forward to what happens when Valegro meets the woman who was to become his rider, Charlotte Dujardin. What this book tells you is what happens when Valegro is first shipped from Holland over to Carl Hester’s yard.  We’re probably all familiar with some elements of his story, but this book introduces you to things you probably didn’t know, such as the Hester naming convention (all horses the yea...

It’s been a while. It’s been a long while, but Caroline Akrill is back. After writing the best-selling Eventers’ Trilogy and a raft of other sharply observed and witty horse stories (not words that often go together) Caroline went off to do Other Things, like run J A Allen equestrian publishers, and run a hotel. The hotel obviously provided rich comic fodder, much of which has surfaced in this book. Her first book for adults, it is a gloriously sweary, brilliant, vital read, which moves effortlessly from the comic to the dark and on to the romantic. Set in the 1980s, when new money had not yet rushed through the world of the English country house and refurbished it, Rushbroke Hall has reached a state of almost terminal decline, reeking with rot, roof timbers open to the skies. Its owner, Sir Vivian Rushbroke, is in hock to the bank for staggering, sick-making sums of money. Rushbroke Hall needs a saviour, and it finds one in the unexpected form of Anna, a chef. A chef with...

Before I get on to the book I am supposed to be reviewing, I wanted to tell you about another Terence Blacker title, The Twyning . I took this on holiday last year. It’s (nominally) a children’s book — a fantasy about rat society in Victorian times. My son (who is 24, and 6’ 5”, before you start imagining some pathetic, waif-like 10-year-old) and I fought over this book. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it was a library book, and my library book, I would not have won, but I did. It is a fantastic read. If you are not keen on rats, do not let that put you off. And if you are concerned about the progress of the mother-son relationship, I bought him a copy of his very own. I am having a bit of a down on covers at the moment, so I will say that I would not have picked Racing Manhattan up had it not been for the fact that it was by Terence Blacker, as the cover, although accurate, has that sort of misty soupiness that Bertie Wooster so much distrusted in Madeleine Bassett. At any ...

I bought this book by mistake at the Cambridge conference, when I was too busy chat, chat, chatting to keep a proper eye on what I was doing. I would never have picked this up normally, frankly being 100% put off by the cover. Do not be. There are no lipstick-wearing, long-haired pouting beauties in the book. Who designs this stuff? Do they actually read the book? When was lip gloss a staple of the 1700s? For that is what this story is set, and it is rather good. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Charlotte and her father have travelled back to England from the Americas, after the death of her mother. Charlotte’s brother has stayed in America. The book opens with the complete destruction of Charlotte’s life when she returns to their latest squalid lodging to find her father dead, and his murderer still there, searching for her father’s papers. She escapes, with the papers, but the murderer has vowed to follow her, and worse, she finds she will get no help from the authorities: q...

It’s been a while since I did a review. A long while, in fact, so to start this particular horse off again, here are some short reviews of some short ebooks. *** Amanda Wills – The Pony of Tanglewood Farm Kindle: £0.99 This is aimed at a younger age than the author’s previous books (I’d say 7+ – reasonably confident readers). It’s a lovely read: tightly plotted, with good strong characters and authentic pony action. Heroine Alice had an accident when she was little, and ended up with a large scar on her face. It is, she thinks, the first and only thing anyone sees when they look at her, and she’s spent her life since (she’s nine) pushing people away. Alice spends most of her time at next door Tanglewood Farm, a rescue centre for animals. Julia, the owner, never takes ponies, but she makes an exception for Star, and Alice helps him get better. At school things have improved too, with new girl Susanna becoming a friend. The problem is that all the animals at the rescue centr...

The Katy stories were what established Victoria Eveleigh as an author. I read those when they were first out, and loved their inspired rejection of the pink, frilly and sentimental. The stories were picked up by Orion, re-written, and after an excursion into an excellent pony series centring around boy hero Joe, Victoria has returned to Katy and her Exmoors. Victoria Eveleigh never disappoints, and this book is another triumph. One of the things I so enjoy about this author is her fearlessness. If you write pony stories, you can, frankly, churn out any rubbish you like as long as it has the requisite pony in it.  Talking about the 1950s, children’s author Geoffrey Tre ase said ‘In those days you could have sold Richard III if you had given it the right wrapper and called it A Pony for Richard,’ but it’s just as valid now. Victoria Eveleigh does not do that. Katy’s Pony Challenge looks at what you do when you can’t actually ride your pony, for whatever reason. And what...

I have kept putting off this review until I can read episode four, and the very newly released episode five Five Stride Line, but I am going to give that up. Not because I'm not enjoying the stories, because I am, very much, but  time to sit and read and consider seems to be eluding me at the moment. The Pony Jumpers is a series of novellas, each centring on a different character from Lattey's earlier Dream On. This very much plays to the author's strengths. There wasn't a character in  Dream On  that I didn't enjoy, or who I felt was poorly realised. Each of them read as if they were complete people, who could step out of the novel at any time and walk off into their own story. And Kate Lattey has picked up some of those characters, and allowed them to their own stories.  The series gives you thoroughly enjoyable, character-driven stories loaded with authentic content: just what we have come to expect from this author. She wrote them at great speed, which ...

Pony Tails is a collection of four stories, written by actress Susan Jameson, who obviously knows her ponies. Each story features a different native breed: Connemara, Welsh Cob, Shetland and Exmoor. There’s a common theme of girls and their love for ponies, but each of the stories plays out in a very different, but just as satisfying, way. One thing they have in common is the sheer force and quality of their dialogue. The author has an excellent ear, and captures family bickering, conversation between friends, and business dealings equally brilliantly. In the first story, a Connemara pony is sold on and on as he’s small and backward. I loved this bit, when the colt is sold yet again: “Sure, doesn’t little Maureen ride him on her own, and her not four yet?” The dealer seemed to remember that little Maureen was “not four yet” last year either, but decided to let that pass. The stories are full of acute bits of observation like that. There’s Wendy, now an Exmoor teenager i...

It's been months since I did any sort of blog post. My dad died unexpectedly shortly after I wrote my last post, and I've found it tremendously difficult to get my brain into any sort of gear for reviewing. Anyway, kind Forelock sent me their most recent books, and I also found in a huge and much overdue study tidy up one of their earlier ones, so I'll be reviewing three of their titles over the coming days. First up is Lucy Johnson's Pony Racer.  Pony Racer takes a well known trope – the suffering child who is redeemed through the love of a good horse, and places it in this rosy-hued story of foster families and racing. Hero Tom has been taken away from his mother who has unspecified mental health issues, and who neglected and ill treated him. The effect this produces on Tom is to make it very hard for him to trust. He is convinced that he will soon be shipped away from the Heaven family (yes, really) and returned to his mother. He has been driven in on himself, an...

Elaine Brown: Jackie’s Pony Secret Jackie’s Pony Secret opens with Jackie sitting on a train with the lady from social services, on their way to Devon, where Jackie will start a new chapter in her life after the death of her mother. She is to live with her grandfather and his new wife in Devon. Until she gets there, Jackie has had very little to do with the countryside, and even less to do with horses. However, her grandfather and his wife, Elise, have a farm. They keep their own horses, and the other stables are rented out to a riding school, which is of course absolutely ideal if you find you’re keen on ponies, which Jackie does. There are plenty of hurdles to be overcome, however, before Jackie can settle into her new life.  The first of these is to overcome her instinctive fear of horses, and to learn to ride. If you read this book as a pony-mad child whose knowledge of ponies is limited you’ll absorb plenty of useful information. The instructional stuff is nicely ...

Dare to Dream was one of my stand out books when it appeared, and its sequel, Dream On is right up there with it. Sequels aren’t necessarily easy things to write. Often authors have used up their best plotlines; any dramatic tension was resolved in the previous book, and you can’t help but be aware of the author scrabbling round frantically trying to find something else with which to engage the reader. None of that applies to Dream On. At the end of the previous book, Marley’s beloved horse, Cruise, had to be sold to enable the girls and their stable to survive. The New Zealand horse world is a relatively small one, and so there’s no way in Dream On  that Marley can escape Cruise. It’s not that his new owner, Bubbles, is a monster either, because she isn’t. She understands just how bad Marley feels. The worst thing for Marley is that it’s obvious Cruise still misses her. He’s not jumping to the best of his ability, but in an act of real love, she advises his new owner ...

As I worked on this book I can't review it, so thank you very much indeed to guest reviewer Sue Howes for standing in. Sue is the author of The Bay Mare , and has had her short stories published in Horse and Pony. She's also contributed guest pieces on self publishing to this blog. ~  0  ~  My first impression on reading the blurb of this book was that it promised to be one of those ‘bonkers’ pony books, like Michael Maguire's  Mylor, the Most Powerful Horse in the World , or John Thorburn's Hildebrand . I was intrigued, as I enjoy seeing where authors take their stories when the normal rules of life don’t apply. Throughout the book I felt as if I were missing something, and now learn that there was indeed a previous book. I would like to read this, to see if Beth, the main human character, comes more to life. I didn’t feel as though I got to know her very well in this book alone. Harry, her talking horse, is another matter! He bounces off the page, a bo...

I know I keep on saying this, and I apologise if you’re a regular reader, but romances are really not my thing. Remember that when you read this review, because this is a cracking read, and the one thing I don’t like about it is due to my dislike of the genre. So, bear with. Incapability Brown  is witty, has considerable charm, and the author writes extremely well about horses. I actually rather liked her hero too, because although a decently independent soul he doesn't have that saturnine, I am revoltingly rude thing that many romantic heroes have, simply of course so that the heroine can see beneath the horror to the decent soul within. Which is really the plot of many pony books, isn’t it? Vile pony, which only the heroine can find the way to understanding, only this time it's a man. Hero Jared Walker is a gardener-come-bodyguard at the Yorkshire house where Izzy Brown has come to look after a rich man’s children. Izzy is not called Incapability Brown for nothing. Throu...

Stacy Gregg is really striking out – after her modern day biographical story The Princess and the Foal , she’s now moved on to a story where the focus moves between the present day and 15 th century Spain. If you’re a regular of my reviews, I expect you can guess who the heroine is: yes, the child of a broken family. Beatriz lives with her mother, although their current home is the Phaedra, a boat moored off the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas. Beatriz' mother is researching jellyfish. Beatriz wants to go back to the USA to live with her father in Florida, but her mother’s not keen. When the novel opens, Beatriz is being delivered back to her mother on a tractor by a woman called Annie, after Beatriz suffered sunstroke. It turns out that Beatriz, in her wanderings around the island, came across a mare struggling in a mudhole, and after an epic struggle, Annie and her tractor helped them both out. Annie is the conduit between Beatriz and the world of 15 th century Spain...

This is the second in the Palomino Pony series. The Palomino Pony of the title, Lily, is in foal, so doesn’t do a great deal in the book because Georgia (Gee) can’t ride her. Georgia is, however, given the chance to ride Wilson to try out for the Working Hunter Team Challenge, as his owner is away at university. So, there’s plenty of authentic horsy action, and there’s a good wodge of dramatic tension caused by the introduction of a new character, Lexie, the step daughter of Joe, former top show jumper. They have moved into the ritziest of ritzy horsy places, dripping with every possible equine luxury, and shining with that spectacular neatness you can only achieve if you have an awful lot of money. Joe’s utterly determined that Lexie will do well, and so she rides, and she jumps, and she has the best ponies, whether she wants them or not. She is, poor girl, terrified of jumping, and is isolated because of the family’s constant moving about from place to place. She’s looking...

Why does Katharina Marcus not have a publishing contract? Why? I loved this book (well, novella, because it's not actually that long). I read a lot of horse fiction and Boys Don’t Ride is streets ahead of most of it. Complete towns and villages, in fact. The author is wonderful at getting those more subtle nuances of the teenage state that pass most authors by: the isolation many feel; the difficulties of getting by even when you appear to have everything going for you. Tull, because of his staggering good looks, gets attention he doesn’t want. The attention hasn’t made him arrogant, or given him that gloss of self confidence the good looking often have. He’s gentle, and he loves horses. Always has done, but he keeps it very quiet, not least because his mother (yes, it is the single parent thing again but I will allow such a good author the odd cliché) doesn’t have the money to pay for lessons. When his absent father doesn’t top up his school canteen account, Tull doesn’...

Against all Hope is the second in the Riverdale Ponies series. When the first book in a series ( The Lost Pony of Riverdale ) ends with most of the major tensions being addressed, you do wonder quite where the next book will go. The major difficulty for heroine Poppy in the first book was her relationship (or the lack of it) with her stepmother. Poppy has never quite forgiven Caroline for not being her dead mother, and with the leaden-footed determination to hold to her point of view that many parents will recognise, shut her stepmother out of her life at every opportunity. By the end of the book, the two have reconciled, and Poppy has realised that stepmother Caroline isa person, just like her. Which is actually quite something, because often children simply don’t think of their parents as people at all. Against all Hope therefore doesn’t have that tension: Poppy’s focus is now moving outside herself, and on to her pony Cloud, and her new friends. As the book opens, the vet...

Beware! Spoiler! Horseboxes are such cumbersome things: even your modern day gleaming Oakley is a lumbering beast. I do have a little difficulty imagining one whisking through time, but I suppose the idea’s no more preposterous than a police box would have been in the 1960s, whisking Dr Who through time and space. But anyway, whisk you through time and space is exactly what this horsebox does. I am, as you will probably have gathered from the Dr Who reference, partial to time travel, and I’m also partial to historical novels, so this once I was over my reaction to the title, this book was right up my street. The book’s two main characters are those stalwarts of 21 st century pony fiction: the child without a full complement of parents. Megan has moved to the country, and a flat at the farm where Josh lives with his grandmother. There used to be horses at the farm, but they were all sold when Josh’s parents were killed. Bored one day, Josh and Megan investigate one of the ...