Tuesday, 26th November 2002, 12:10pm
An opinion by: Nette

 

Horse Whisperer by Nicolas Evans

And I was thinking, why on earth am I reading a horse book? I am not a horse person. But Mary left this here when her suitcase was overflowing and she liked it enough to recommend it. And she doesn't seem to be a horse person either, although I suspect she knows something about cowboys.

The premise is very dramatic - there is an accident that leaves behind a wounded child and a wounded horse and they need to be healed. The person to do that is a cowboy with special skills in horse taming, the whisperer of the title. The accident is achingly suspenseful, and so with that dramatic start we are hooked into wanting the pain to resolve.

The heroine of the story is not the tormented girl who has been injured but her mother, a high-flying magazine exec with a trendy New York lifestyle. The author has loads of fun contrasting the superficial city folk with the down-home country people, to the point that you almost start believing that living on an isolated farm with a bunch of mean-spirited rednecks is more meaningful. Oh, Redford, I mean Tom! isn't mean-spirited or redneck. He's just earthy and brilliant about horses.

I liked the philosophy of how to treat animals, the horse psychology. That was my favourite part of the book. What I liked the least was the ending but it wasn't that it was overly predictable or trite, it was just a way of tying up ends that made me say, oh yeah sure, that makes sense to end it there otherwise it would go on forever. Maybe Nicolas Evans got tired or was told his book was long enough. But I think maybe it could have rambled along a bit more. I got caught up in the slow, sleepy pace of a breezy Montana evening. Aw shucks, maybe I'll rent the video...

Readers have left 2 comments

Leave a comment

name
email (if you want to be notified)
<-- Please retype the word you see here:
Notify me when someone replies to this post?