With the sure hand of a seasoned writer, Aryn Kyle has crafted a brilliant debut with her novel,
. Alice Winston, living on the family horse ranch, a marginal enterprise in Desert Valley, Colorado, is a 12-year-old girl with more than she can handle and no one to help her cope. Polly, a classmate of hers, drowned in the nearby canal and was carried out by Alice's father, Joe, a member of the volunteer posse. Her older sister, 16-year-old Nona, eloped with a rodeo cowboy. Her mother never leaves her bedroom, a case of clinical depression. 'My mother had spent nearly my whole life in her bedroom... Nona said that one day, while I was still a baby, our mother had handed me to her, said she was tired, and gone upstairs to rest. She never came back down.'
Joe has little time for Alice, other than counting on her to muck out the stalls and be polite to the paying customers. He doesn't even notice that she has outgrown her clothes. What Kyle does with this scenario is never predictable or clichéd. She writes beautifully of landscapes, interior and exterior, ravaged by extremes: the hottest summer in years, followed by a deluge; a lonely, isolated girl reaching out to a teacher, Mr. Delmar, equally alienated.
Alice starts telling lies, weaving bits and pieces of other people's lives into the tales she tells the teacher. What we eventually find out about her family is more poignant and tragic than anything she can make up. Horse lore is a large part of what explains each of the people in the novel: separating mares from their foals, the way a stud is treated, breaking a horse, ordinary everyday contact. This bond is explored in depth and each person: Alice, Nona, Joe, Joe's father, Alice's mother, is affected by this closeness in a different, unique way, revelatory of each individual's character. Much more than a coming-of-age tale, Kyle told a story of compromises and dreams that will never come true.
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Rated by buyers
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The very first chapter of this book is based on a short story and I found the story to drag terribly for the very first 100 pages. I had to keep checking the cover to make sure it said "best seller." Then it seemed to hit its' stride and begin moving....finally.
The author, while very strong on human behavior and tics, to the point they become annoying as in the endless physical gestures characters make, completely loses it in the equine department.
I have ridden, broken, bred, trained horses for a long, long time, living on a professional trainer's ranch. I don't know where Ms. Kyle got her training information of IF she did. There is one character, Shiela Altman, Alice's schoolmate, a show trainee who is supposed to be Alice's father's "star" in the show ring and between boarding her horse and showing is supposed to support Alice's entire family. Well, Shiela has the IQ of a turnip, cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. Come on, showing horses is NOT rocket science! That they go on with this pathetic girl leading her to think she can show horses is ridiculous!
Then there is the breeding scene of Darling to the competing trainer's stallion. Also ridiculous. Basically it's a rape scene. No professional would just tie up a mare and throw the stallion at her until she had been "teased" which is some horsey making-out to see if the mare is ovulating. In the iron-clad world of mares, no ovum, no hanky panky! Period!!
Riding a green-broke horse in a reining class and winning it? Yeah, if you're the only one in the class! It takes months of careful training. Basically this would be like enrolling a little girl in ballet class for one week, then throwing her out on stage at the Joffrey Ballet and she's better than the professionals who have been at it forever!
Breaking King the colt, who was just weaned? Mares laying down and groaning with filled udders after weaning their colts? Never saw that. Putting Shiela in a reining class when the girl can't even lead a horse in Showmanship? Closing your eyes and turning your head when riding towards a high jump as Patty Jo was told? Never saw the Olympic riders do that! Is Alice's "trainer" father trying to KILL clients? Patty Jo's face hitting the horse's head sounding like porcelain plate breaking on cement? Basically it's a squishy sound when a horse's head breaks your face. Been there, done that! If you are new to riding, do NOT copy what you read here!!! You could seriously hurt. The book needs a disclaimer.
About the humans though, Ms. Kyle, for her young age of around 30 knows a lot about human nature, as when Nona, who has hot hormones, completely sacrifices her life to her hormones, running off with a drifter bronc rider. Once the sex cools off, however, and they can't make livings, they are forced to come home to live with Alice and her parents. Both Nona and hubby Jerry have loser mentalities and always will, probably sponging off people who provide for the rest of their lives.
Alice's relationship with Mr. Delmar, the teacher, was a little too spooky, thought it was headed for a not nice place. I thought the name Delmar in a book set in the west was a little too soon and close to Ennis Delmar in the recent Brokeback Mountain.
Towards the 200 page area the story really speeds up. Ms. Kyle can definitely write and she will no doubt write some good books in the future, but I sure hope she finds a better technical advisor if she writes about horses!
Rated by buyers
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While reading it I thought this book quite a nice read, especially for people that like horses or cominging of age novels, though I like neither in particular. I agree with former reviewers that is a bit depressing, it's not a "cheerful" book at all, despite the fact that it ends well (not very convincing, kind of "glued on").
But after having finished it, reviewing, I think actually very little happened in the book, there was not much of a plot or a storyline. It was just about a quite troublesome (but not much more troublesome then the years before) year in the life of Alice.
It was a nice book, but in a few months I will probably have forgotten what is was about at all.
Writing this I think I should have given it 3 stars but I cannot change the rating anymore.
Rated by buyers
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This book is awful. It tells the story of Alice Winston, a young girl growing up on a horse ranch. Shame on Aryn Kyle for including such senseless descriptions of violence and cruelty to the horses on the ranch. Given the descriptions of horses being dragged behind trucks; beaten in the head with a hammer; run to exhaustion as punishment for not winning a ribbon; left in the hot desert in a pen with no shelter or water; to list a few of the cruelties, I am baffled by some of the positive reviews for this book which have made statements such as "hauntingly beautiful." I would not recommend this book to anyone.
Rated by buyers
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I really wanted to like this book, but I had to force myself to keep at it til the end. The horse brutality aside, so much of the story was just IMPLAUSIBLE. I'm sorry, but I can't buy into the horse boarders who come EVERY DAY to the stables with their alcoholic drinks, the shy 6th grader who calls her teacher every night and even has her dad take her to his house, the student rider "who rides every afternoon for one hour to three hours" - after school??? Is there no sunset at this place?
The prose at times was very nice, but I need believability!
Rated by buyers
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This book would be an excellent coming of age novel, but the casual brutality that dominates the characters' treatment of their horses makes it extremely hard to sympathize with them. Moreover, the depiction of life on a horse farm is so wildly inaccurate that book loses all credibility -- one key scene revolves around experienced horsepeople seriously trying to train a weanling, which the author refers to as a foal, to saddle. Another has a beginning rider competing in English equitation, Western equitation and reining on the same horse at the same show. Yet another has the impoverished horse trainer putting a valuable show horse out to pasture with a herd of broodmares so they can beat up on her so she will be easier to train. And the part where the young mare miraculously goes from untrained to crackerjack finished reining horse in less than one season AFTER being left out in the pasture to be stomped on by the mares -- ridiculous!
Her forays into describing equine behavior verge on the downright bizzare. Mares do not throw themselves to the ground en masse in pain and grief at weaning time; their udders do not crack and bleed from excess milk. They do not lie down and moan and thump their heads on the ground to get rid of flies -- they either roll or run.
All the well-drawn characters in the world will do an author no good if she can't trouble herself to do enough basic research to make the world they inhabit believable.
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Q: In 2004, your short story 'Foaling Season,' the very first chapter of The God of Animals, won a National Magazine Award for Fiction for The Atlantic Monthly. Did you have the idea for your book at the time you wrote the short story, or did the novel develop over time? 
