Post by tintin on Jan 24, 2013 18:49:14 GMT 1
This is probably one of the best pony books I have read, and amongst the best books. It works on all sorts of levels.
The book starts in an unusual way when Guy Beaumont, a boy boarding at public school, receives a telegram that one of his family’s mares had foaled. The foal is Martini (the dam is Sherry) who is the pony for sale of the title. The young man is to raise and school Martini. The atmosphere in this part of the book where the lad is between school and becoming a Cadet at Sandhurst is idyllic. I wonder if there is a conscious parallel here in that both man and horse start from an environment of care and plenty and the best possible education and then go out to make their way in the world. I absolutely loved this part of the book, and would have loved it even more as a boy. However, as an adult there was a slight foreboding of the “this is too good to last type”
We leave the lad on the edge of his journey and accompany the horse.
In some way the book could be seen as a 50’s Black Beauty, but it is an imagined biography, rather than auto-biography, of a horse. Even more differently it is a biography written in the first person by four owners. This is one of the book’s great triumphs. The owner’s are incredibly different yet the author writes in authentically different voices that really sound in the mind’s ear as distinct, individual and real people. Descriptive writing with the sisters is always good and the gap between reading and imagining in their works is, to me, tiny.
Martini’s next owner is Pip Cox. Pip fell in love with Martini when Martini was a young horse and she was a little girl. In human terms this is a bit like a first relationship or first job that we might have dreamed of then that goes horribly wrong and casts a long shadow over the rest of life. Pip has overhorsed herself. To make this worse Martini is young full of beans, inexperienced and not exercised much. Neither Pip’s family, her horsey friends or her riding instructress are much help to her, in some cases putting more pressure on her. All of these are portrayed sympathetically. Poor Pip is put off riding for life and poor Martini acquires a bad reputation.
The third owner, Lydia Pike, is a crashingly insensitive showjumper and improver of horses for sale. Lydia is an extremely well drawn character, almost Dickensian. We only slowly have revealed to us just how awful she is. Even Lydia is portrayed sympathetically as she is the creature of her environment. Her father and instructor employ the same harsh unsympathetic methods. Martini having transgressed, like many people, mainly out of youthful foolishness and high spirits, coupled with a lack of proper supervision, has now ended up in the equivalent for horses of detention centre, or a really nasty dead end job. Like many people Martini is not improved by this experience and becomes more nervous and rebellious.
The final owner, Lettie Lonsdale is almost like a probation officer for Martini. She does start to bring out the best in the horse, but it is not at all easy. Her little brother is quite memorably annoying. Like so many of the sisters books we leave the two of them at what is really the beginning rather than the end of their adventures. You wish them well as they have both been through it a bit.
This book is very well written as a book, it is also a book I would say would be ideal as a set text in any school for riding instructors. What did each character do right/wrong? What could they have done better? You are their instructor how would you advise them? How would you help Pip to buy a more suitable horse? How would you cope with such a mixed ability class? And (probably the most challenging) Lydia comes to you to improve her riding…
There is one thing in this book that is very amusing to me. Some hunting girls are discussing a French officer from “some Cavalry School” and are dismissing him saying if he came to their country he would be afraid of the fences… The book was published in 1951 and thinking of what the cadets and graduates of Saumur were doing in this period this made me laugh out loud, I am sure the author was taking it out of a certain sort of very blinkered English person. I could just imagine some French officer complaining,
“Ah can face the steaming jungle of Indo-China, the immense bled of Algeria with its boiling sun, ah can train the forsaken of all the earth in the Legion or sit a rearing horse in the Cadre Noir, ah can face high altitude parachuting, but deese eenglish hedges, sacre bleu, I must retire to mah bed avec un cognac…”
The book is perhaps not as loveable as others such as “Pony to School” or “Impossible Horse”(apart from the idyllic first bit), but it is very good – as a “slice of life”, as writing, as instruction and as a story. Gold Cup for me.
The book starts in an unusual way when Guy Beaumont, a boy boarding at public school, receives a telegram that one of his family’s mares had foaled. The foal is Martini (the dam is Sherry) who is the pony for sale of the title. The young man is to raise and school Martini. The atmosphere in this part of the book where the lad is between school and becoming a Cadet at Sandhurst is idyllic. I wonder if there is a conscious parallel here in that both man and horse start from an environment of care and plenty and the best possible education and then go out to make their way in the world. I absolutely loved this part of the book, and would have loved it even more as a boy. However, as an adult there was a slight foreboding of the “this is too good to last type”
We leave the lad on the edge of his journey and accompany the horse.
In some way the book could be seen as a 50’s Black Beauty, but it is an imagined biography, rather than auto-biography, of a horse. Even more differently it is a biography written in the first person by four owners. This is one of the book’s great triumphs. The owner’s are incredibly different yet the author writes in authentically different voices that really sound in the mind’s ear as distinct, individual and real people. Descriptive writing with the sisters is always good and the gap between reading and imagining in their works is, to me, tiny.
Martini’s next owner is Pip Cox. Pip fell in love with Martini when Martini was a young horse and she was a little girl. In human terms this is a bit like a first relationship or first job that we might have dreamed of then that goes horribly wrong and casts a long shadow over the rest of life. Pip has overhorsed herself. To make this worse Martini is young full of beans, inexperienced and not exercised much. Neither Pip’s family, her horsey friends or her riding instructress are much help to her, in some cases putting more pressure on her. All of these are portrayed sympathetically. Poor Pip is put off riding for life and poor Martini acquires a bad reputation.
The third owner, Lydia Pike, is a crashingly insensitive showjumper and improver of horses for sale. Lydia is an extremely well drawn character, almost Dickensian. We only slowly have revealed to us just how awful she is. Even Lydia is portrayed sympathetically as she is the creature of her environment. Her father and instructor employ the same harsh unsympathetic methods. Martini having transgressed, like many people, mainly out of youthful foolishness and high spirits, coupled with a lack of proper supervision, has now ended up in the equivalent for horses of detention centre, or a really nasty dead end job. Like many people Martini is not improved by this experience and becomes more nervous and rebellious.
The final owner, Lettie Lonsdale is almost like a probation officer for Martini. She does start to bring out the best in the horse, but it is not at all easy. Her little brother is quite memorably annoying. Like so many of the sisters books we leave the two of them at what is really the beginning rather than the end of their adventures. You wish them well as they have both been through it a bit.
This book is very well written as a book, it is also a book I would say would be ideal as a set text in any school for riding instructors. What did each character do right/wrong? What could they have done better? You are their instructor how would you advise them? How would you help Pip to buy a more suitable horse? How would you cope with such a mixed ability class? And (probably the most challenging) Lydia comes to you to improve her riding…
There is one thing in this book that is very amusing to me. Some hunting girls are discussing a French officer from “some Cavalry School” and are dismissing him saying if he came to their country he would be afraid of the fences… The book was published in 1951 and thinking of what the cadets and graduates of Saumur were doing in this period this made me laugh out loud, I am sure the author was taking it out of a certain sort of very blinkered English person. I could just imagine some French officer complaining,
“Ah can face the steaming jungle of Indo-China, the immense bled of Algeria with its boiling sun, ah can train the forsaken of all the earth in the Legion or sit a rearing horse in the Cadre Noir, ah can face high altitude parachuting, but deese eenglish hedges, sacre bleu, I must retire to mah bed avec un cognac…”
The book is perhaps not as loveable as others such as “Pony to School” or “Impossible Horse”(apart from the idyllic first bit), but it is very good – as a “slice of life”, as writing, as instruction and as a story. Gold Cup for me.