I am not Horse Guy.
I have been around horses, I have ridden horses, but have no affinity for or expertise with them. But on occasion, people have mistaken me for Horse Guy, because of my proximity to horsey women. My sister raised quarter horses for a few years; my niece is recognized as a former world champion by the Palomino Horse Breeders of America. My wife, Karen, grew up riding, and once upon a time spent her weekends working at a stable while trying to decide whether she wanted to become a horse owner. (She decided against it after realizing that horses can be smart-alecky and require a great deal of cleanup work.)
So sometimes I am mistaken for Horse Guy. The last two times I accompanied Karen on a ride, I was set up with the most problematic horse because they extrapolated from my wife's expertise that I could handle it. And this sexist assumption was compounded by my pride, which prevented me from asking for a more appropriate steed. I may not be Horse Guy, but I recognize in myself certain mulish tendencies.
So my appreciation for Talley English's debut novel Horse (Knopf, $26.95) might be even deeper were I Horse Guy. As it is, I am stunned by the book, which at least makes feel as though I understand a little bit what it's like to be a young woman going through more than she realizes at the moment, and how a connection with another animal can allow us to make sense of ourselves when nothing else seems to. It made me feel as if I know what it's like to ride in the competent, natural way some people can ride, to command another (larger, more powerful) body with their mind.
It made me feel like forgiveness is an important part of being human even though I'm not always sure that I believe that.
English's novel is about Teagan, part of a family that loves animals, living on a few acres they call Blue View in rural Virginia. Teagan's father, Robert, is a school principal and a Horse Guy; her mother, Susanna, is a preschool teacher who rides a docile mare named Duchess. Blue View is littered with animals, dogs and geese and a couple of barn cats Teagan and her older brother, Charlie, rescued from an animal shelter's "death row." They wanted something that didn't care for people, Teagan says, so they came away with Gums and Slinky -- a toothless tomcat and a shabby kitten missing half an ear.
But all is not idyllic; the summer before she starts high school, Teagan's father leaves her mother for another woman. (Make what you will of the fact the family's surname is French and the author's is English.) This is not the only upset in her life. She is about to leave for a boarding school with a riding program not far from her family's home in rural Virginia, but before she leaves her beloved horse Zephyr -- which she intended on taking with her -- is fatally injured.
So she goes off to school alone. She expects to ride one of the school's horses but she is surprised when her mother sends her father's horse, a haughty and difficult thoroughbred gelding bought on impulse. His name is Obsidian, called Ian, and he is dangerous and beautiful; an intelligent, headstrong animal constantly probing her for weakness. He is really too much horse for her, but she sticks with him, for a while.
Meanwhile, her father relocates near her, in a shabby apartment, and shows up on weekends to take her to lunch and have her stay over. To win her forgiveness.
English employs a terse, understated style; short chapters move the story along briskly. Occasionally there is a breaking-in of a much older Teagan, which injects a sense of foreboding, and occasionally it's hard to divine the logic of the switches in point-of-view from first- to third-person narration. But in its best parts -- which have to do with the developing telepathy between horse and rider -- Horse gets at some murky, painful and honest stuff.
. . .
Anne Tyler's Clock Dance (Knopf) is breezy and slick, a minor work from a major artist but entirely enjoyable and pleasantly humane. It's about Willa, another one of Tyler's offbeat middle-class protagonists who, when she learns that her son's ex-girlfriend has been (accidentally) wounded by a stray bullet, journeys from the affluent comfort of her Arizona existence to a grittier Baltimore neighborhood to take care of the woman's daughter.
Once there, Willa discovers the little girl is a straight-up charmer, a thoughtful and tender child with a wonderful dog named Airplane. She also discovers a poor but proud community of new friends that seems in many ways more responsive and alert than her own family -- as well as more in need of her attention. Her new friends can't parse why Willa can't be more direct about what she wants and needs -- why she has to go at everything "slantwise."
Well, that's how Tylerian protagonists go at everything. Like a lot of us, Willa's enslaved by her own manners.
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Style on 08/12/2018