It’s hard to make a chinchilla blush, and yet…
It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this that any equestrian journalist worth their salt isn’t just utterly bonkers about horses – they’re also unapologetic bookworms with exceptionally high standards. Standards that are, I admit, prone to slipping when confronted with that most beguiling of genres – the pony novel and its grown-up equivalent.
Okay, so there’s a real shortage of quality horsey fiction out there. But it does exist, largely in discontinued paperbacks and confusingly formatted Kindle downloads, and frankly, I’m usually just as up for reading the real clangers. I’ll save you from wading through the murky swampland of the equestrian self-publishing sector, though – instead, here’s a completely subjective and totally biased list of the best horsey novels in celebration of World Book Day. We expect you’re all accidentally dressed up as a member of the Saddle Club (bagsy Stevie, sorry).
Barn Blind and Horse Heaven – Jane Smiley
Smiley is probably the only Pulitzer winner to pen a couple of horse novels, but I’m forever grateful that she did. An amateur showjumper herself, she spent many years ensconced in the world of horse racing, too, and her two passions in the equestrian world yielded a couple of great books. Fair warning: Barn Blind will destroy you. I first read it when I was sixteen (WHY), and spent the following week wandering around in a depressive daze, flinching every time I thought about what I’d just experienced. The second I’d recovered, I read it again. Set deep in American farmland, it follows a troubled family spearheaded by a mother with one thing on her mind – success in the show ring for her four children. Her tunnel vision has far-reaching consequences (and will instil a deep fear of Pony Club mothers into you).
If the racing scene is more up your street, order yourself a copy of the terribly-named but otherwise superb Horse Heaven. This ensemble piece weaves together the narratives of a plethora of characters within the flat racing industry, scattered around the country, only vaguely connected to one another, and all navigating their own issues. There’s an owner having an affair with a trainer, a Walmart clerk who finds herself helping a rapper with his horse interests, an animal communicator, a jockey with a weight problem and, of course, the horses. Read this and try not to fall in love with plain brown wrapper Justabob – I dare you.
In the Pink – Molly Watson
One of these days I’m going to make good on my promise to write a novel that’s a bit of Bridget Jones for the eventing set, but until I find the time to do so, In the Pink does a marvellous job of moving the format over to the horse world. Watson’s area of interest isn’t eventing, though – instead, it’s hunting in the glorious Ledbury country. The book begins as Watson and her sister, Bee, make the impromptu decision to leave their London lives and move to the country, where they speed through the process of finding themselves (only vaguely suitable) mounts and embark on their quest to hunt down a Peppermore.
What’s a Peppermore, you ask?
“…Bee dropped by and wedged a copy of Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man into our letterbox along with a detailed but incomprehensible set of sums allegedly showing why her mortgage payments prevent her from taking out a loan to bankroll The Plan herself. She had underlined in red those of Sassoon’s passages that she felt best made the case for the fallback scenario of a rustic wedding should my overdraft facilities fail us before the end of the season.
Well, forget fallback scenario. If we run across anyone like fast-living Jack and Charlie Peppermore – described by Sassoon on pages 234 and 235 as ‘desperately fine specimens of a genuine English traditional type which has become innocuous since the abolition of duelling’ and who were ‘reckless, insolent, unprincipled; but never dull, frequently amusing, and, when they chose, had charming manners’ – all resources will be channelled into enticing them to kiss us all over at their earliest convenience.”
Quite.
Dark Horse and Alibi Man by Tami Hoag
Even if you’re not a crime reader – as I’m certainly not – Tami Hoag’s two equestrian offerings make for a quick and interesting read. Hoag isn’t just one of the foremost crime writers in the States, she’s also an accomplished dressage rider – and her two novels set within the underbelly of the Winter Equestrian Festival won’t leave you cringing over the details. Well, except for any details involving ‘gators. Those might make you cringe.
Riders – Jilly Cooper
Eventing Jesus bless Jilly Cooper for inventing the bonkbuster, a laughably fat tome full of naughty bits and, if we’re honest, probably one or two too many Shakespeare references to be entirely believable. Every pony-mad teenager in England cut their teeth on Riders, which is about 8,000 pages long and just as jam-packed with showjumping as it is with the aforementioned naughty bits. Cooper’s books have so many characters that they come with an index of all the people, horses, and dogs within – kind of like a good-natured Game of Thrones with even fewer clothes, somehow – and you’ll love, or love to hate, every last one of them. Also, they all live in a place called Rutshire, which is hilarious, because they… well, you know.
Riders focuses on the ongoing feud between top showjumper and insufferable posho Rupert Campbell-Black and the tempestuous gypsy Jake Lovell, who’ll do whatever it takes to prove he deserves a spot on the British team. You will read this a hundred times and then spend the rest of your life pitching editors to let you go and do a boozy interview with the Coopatron herself – or that’s what I’ve been doing, anyway.
Kiss and Tell – Fiona Walker
If there’s a black mark against Jilly Cooper, it’s that we probably won’t get a book about eventing out of her – “it’s a sport for gifted amateurs,” remarks Rupert sniffily in the pages of Riders. But where Jilly left a gap, Fiona Walker was quick to offer something to fill it, and her collection of lengthy novels about eventing power couple Tash and Hugo make for a lighthearted – if not quick – read. Kiss and Tell is the last of the series but can be read as a standalone, and it’s the most eventing heavy, so it’s the perfect option if you want reasonably accurate descriptions of major British events and a hot Kiwi so vaguely described that you can go through the process of picturing him as pretty much everyone who’s ever ridden for New Zealand. I’m utterly convinced Walker had Jock Paget in mind when she wrote him, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on even if she personally tells me I’m wrong.
National Velvet – Enid Bagnold
I’m not actually convinced that Bagnold’s magnum opus, which became one of the best-loved horse films of all time, is actually written for children. Yes, it’s about a child – the incorrigible Velvet Brown, who wins a horse in a raffle and goes on to gender-bend her way into the Grand National – but its depictions of the eccentricities of a working class family between the wars, and all the muddle and chaos that goes on within their farm and in their interactions, is pure grown-up fare. National Velvet might be, at face value, the ultimate pony novel, but on a closer re-read it’s a study of the intricacies – and fallibility – of human interaction, and a celebration of women succeeding in male-dominated areas, an exciting new idea as England rumbled towards another World War. If nothing else, we’re all a little bit Velvet – tunnel-visioned, occasionally awkward, and prone to flights of fancy. We wouldn’t do such a mad sport if we weren’t.
