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A middle-grade novel about a girl in a hospital who sees winged horses in the mirrors, then climbs over the wall of an abandoned garden on the grounds and finds a horse with a broken wing.
With a premise like that, how can you go wrong? Well--once you ask yourself that question, the ways become obvious. I will say that this book is quite beautifully written and is obviously doing exactly what the author wanted it to do. There is no shortage of craft. It just managed to hit multiple points which are not objectively bad, but which I really dislike. Spoilers for the entire book follow.
Once one asks "How could this go wrong or at least be a book which Rachel will dislike," the obvious answer is to write it not as a story about magic, tenacity, and healing, as I foolishly assumed it would be from the blurb, but about delusion, death, and depressingness. Or maybe there's magic and healing! It's one of those "magic or madness" stories which is ambiguous right up to the end, all the way down to an author's note saying, "I don't know whether the magic was real or not, or whether she died or not."
That being said, the story is super-depressing whether or not the magic is real. In fact deciding which way makes it more depressing could be a fun party game!
Something the blurb doesn't mention is that the book takes place during the Blitz. The children are all in a TB hospital for kids, and also are all separated from their parents. Emmaline, who sees the winged horses, is friends with Anna, an older girl in love with Thomas, the one-armed handyman/general help. Thomas is the only other person who can see the winged horses.
Emmaline was clearly traumatized by something horrible that happened during the Blitz, which is slowly revealed to be the death by burning of her three horses who were trapped in the stables. Nope, fooled ya! It's then revealed that actually, she imagines/pretends/delusionally believes that that's what happened, because what really happened was that her beloved mother and sister burned to death while trapped in part of their home, while screaming for help and banging on the walls, which Emmaline remembers as the horses frantically whinnying and kicking. Also, Emmaline's father was killed in the war.
Other than Anna, who ends up coughing up enough blood to drench the sheets and then dies without ever having been kissed, Emmaline isn't friends with any of the other kids. They either bully or ignore her. When an injured flying horse shows up in the garden, she starts getting notes from the "Horse Lord," who tells her that the horse is in danger and she needs to assemble a protective shield made of all the colors of the rainbow. Since nearly everything at the hospital is depressing and gray except for Anna's colored pencils, Emmaline has to steal various items to get a rainbow, then sneak out to the snowy garden against doctor's orders. She tells the Horse Lord what she's up to, and he encourages her via notes.
One of the sick boys consistently warns Emmaline that Thomas is evil and is going to cook and eat her, but Emmaline eventually decides that Thomas is actually nice and the boy is just prejudiced because of his arm. Desperate to complete her rainbow, and meanwhile getting sicker and sicker due to going out in the cold, she steals the boy's comic book his father sent him. In retaliation, he smashes the pencils dead Anna left her. Emmaline coughs up huge amounts of blood, just like Anna did right before she died, then delegates Thomas to complete the rainbow shield as she can't even get out of bed. Thomas confesses that he is the Horse Lord, and tells her the horses are the spirits of the dead kids.
In a hallucinatory sequence, Emmaline goes out and rides the winged horse, apparently to her death. Then it cuts to her waking up and feeling much better. She sharpens the pencil fragments so all the kids can have one, and learns that one of the other kids can see the winged horses too. The end!
This is a really strange story. No matter how you imagine what's real, it keeps coming out bizarre and depressing.
If Emmaline imagined the entire thing, then you have a story of a girl who kept defying doctor's orders because of her delusion, and then either died as a result, or almost died but instead woke up still delusional. If she imagined Thomas's role, the same. If Thomas was feeding her delusions, then he either murdered her (accidentally? deliberately?) or nearly did. Creepy!
If the magic is real, then why is Thomas making her risk her life and get sicker and maybe die? Why can't he steal his own damn rainbow supplies? Again, creepy.
I honestly couldn't tell if Thomas was supposed to be sinister or not - it's set up in the usual way kids' books do where kids are unfairly prejudiced against someone who's "different" and actually he's perfectly nice. But if you look at what he actually does, if he's doing anything and not just a hallucination, it's really not to Emmaline's benefit whether there's real magic or not. At best he's pushing her to risk her life to save the horse that's the ghost of a dead girl.
This is why I rarely like "magic or madness" books. I like ambiguity when it leads to multiple satisfying outcomes. But that type of story tends to lead to multiple unsatisfying outcomes.
An Amazon reader who also found it depressing wrote, On the positive side, the story gives us a good look at how many children's lives were lost before vaccines came into existence.
The Secret Horses of Briar Hill
With a premise like that, how can you go wrong? Well--once you ask yourself that question, the ways become obvious. I will say that this book is quite beautifully written and is obviously doing exactly what the author wanted it to do. There is no shortage of craft. It just managed to hit multiple points which are not objectively bad, but which I really dislike. Spoilers for the entire book follow.
Once one asks "How could this go wrong or at least be a book which Rachel will dislike," the obvious answer is to write it not as a story about magic, tenacity, and healing, as I foolishly assumed it would be from the blurb, but about delusion, death, and depressingness. Or maybe there's magic and healing! It's one of those "magic or madness" stories which is ambiguous right up to the end, all the way down to an author's note saying, "I don't know whether the magic was real or not, or whether she died or not."
That being said, the story is super-depressing whether or not the magic is real. In fact deciding which way makes it more depressing could be a fun party game!
Something the blurb doesn't mention is that the book takes place during the Blitz. The children are all in a TB hospital for kids, and also are all separated from their parents. Emmaline, who sees the winged horses, is friends with Anna, an older girl in love with Thomas, the one-armed handyman/general help. Thomas is the only other person who can see the winged horses.
Emmaline was clearly traumatized by something horrible that happened during the Blitz, which is slowly revealed to be the death by burning of her three horses who were trapped in the stables. Nope, fooled ya! It's then revealed that actually, she imagines/pretends/delusionally believes that that's what happened, because what really happened was that her beloved mother and sister burned to death while trapped in part of their home, while screaming for help and banging on the walls, which Emmaline remembers as the horses frantically whinnying and kicking. Also, Emmaline's father was killed in the war.
Other than Anna, who ends up coughing up enough blood to drench the sheets and then dies without ever having been kissed, Emmaline isn't friends with any of the other kids. They either bully or ignore her. When an injured flying horse shows up in the garden, she starts getting notes from the "Horse Lord," who tells her that the horse is in danger and she needs to assemble a protective shield made of all the colors of the rainbow. Since nearly everything at the hospital is depressing and gray except for Anna's colored pencils, Emmaline has to steal various items to get a rainbow, then sneak out to the snowy garden against doctor's orders. She tells the Horse Lord what she's up to, and he encourages her via notes.
One of the sick boys consistently warns Emmaline that Thomas is evil and is going to cook and eat her, but Emmaline eventually decides that Thomas is actually nice and the boy is just prejudiced because of his arm. Desperate to complete her rainbow, and meanwhile getting sicker and sicker due to going out in the cold, she steals the boy's comic book his father sent him. In retaliation, he smashes the pencils dead Anna left her. Emmaline coughs up huge amounts of blood, just like Anna did right before she died, then delegates Thomas to complete the rainbow shield as she can't even get out of bed. Thomas confesses that he is the Horse Lord, and tells her the horses are the spirits of the dead kids.
In a hallucinatory sequence, Emmaline goes out and rides the winged horse, apparently to her death. Then it cuts to her waking up and feeling much better. She sharpens the pencil fragments so all the kids can have one, and learns that one of the other kids can see the winged horses too. The end!
This is a really strange story. No matter how you imagine what's real, it keeps coming out bizarre and depressing.
If Emmaline imagined the entire thing, then you have a story of a girl who kept defying doctor's orders because of her delusion, and then either died as a result, or almost died but instead woke up still delusional. If she imagined Thomas's role, the same. If Thomas was feeding her delusions, then he either murdered her (accidentally? deliberately?) or nearly did. Creepy!
If the magic is real, then why is Thomas making her risk her life and get sicker and maybe die? Why can't he steal his own damn rainbow supplies? Again, creepy.
I honestly couldn't tell if Thomas was supposed to be sinister or not - it's set up in the usual way kids' books do where kids are unfairly prejudiced against someone who's "different" and actually he's perfectly nice. But if you look at what he actually does, if he's doing anything and not just a hallucination, it's really not to Emmaline's benefit whether there's real magic or not. At best he's pushing her to risk her life to save the horse that's the ghost of a dead girl.
This is why I rarely like "magic or madness" books. I like ambiguity when it leads to multiple satisfying outcomes. But that type of story tends to lead to multiple unsatisfying outcomes.
An Amazon reader who also found it depressing wrote, On the positive side, the story gives us a good look at how many children's lives were lost before vaccines came into existence.
The Secret Horses of Briar Hill
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This, though. Um. No. Why.
Did it win the Newbery by any chance? :D
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The author's afterword talks about how the dying kids are fighting their own private battle much like the soldiers at the front, which is a metaphor that makes a lot of sense for Narnia and so forth, but not so much for a story about a delusional girl throwing her life away. Maybe it makes more sense if the magic is real and she dies to save the horse, but the horse is already dead, so...
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From this premise, I was assuming the failure mode would be the usual thing with animal books where the horse depressingly dies—on beyond Steinbeck, if you find an injured pegasus in your backyard and try to nurse it back to health as some kind of metaphor for your own recovery or even just an act of kindness you will be disappoint. So at least that was different.
The thing where not everyone can see the winged horses sounds like a really weird riff on J.K. Rowling's idea of the Thestral. I mean I wondered at once if the other child has a traumatizing death in their past, too. I am probably not supposed to.
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Solidarity!
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Actually, I read a Secret Garden sequel set during the Blitz which was also awesomely depressing. Maybe there's just something about the secret garden vibe that drives people to it.
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+1 and would read, especially since I see from comments that no one has ever written a sequel to The Secret Garden, not even an unsatisfying one, it's really just a void in the field here, good thing no one tried and really blew it.
[reposted comment originally nested wrong]
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EXCUSE U. DICKON IS THE ONE WHO FINDS ANGRY CRYING CHILDREN IN REMOTE PARTS OF THE GROUNDS AND GIVES THEM FRIENDLY PEPTALKS. YOU WON'T CATCH COLIN DOING THAT SHIT.
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Now I realize that in real life disfiguring facial injuries + PTSD can do weird things to people, but this is The Secret Garden and DICKON WOULD NEVER.
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Fiction aside, PTSD doesn't tend to change basic aspects of personality. It can fuck you up a LOT without doing that.
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What is WRONG with some people? That's just... NO. Absolutely not.
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Which is unfortunate, because life at the manor is like nonstop Tatties For the War Effort, with some extra bonus "Well if you want something bright and cheerful you can... grow some flowers! :D :D :D" and the child is like, If I Get Any More Fresh Air And Exercise I Will Fucking Puke.
But then they learn to appreciate it, and I don't know, grow interested in science and birds or some shit. And by the end of it Misselthwaite and the garden are comforting things to come back to, and they're actually happy to help Mary and Colin keep up the roses in the Secret Garden (which got conveniently locked when assessors for the war effort came 'round to see what could be torn up to dig crops with).
Something heartwarming like that.
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Mary is obviously the one who hid the key. Dickon simply doesn't say anything to the assessors; Colin might have been away that weekend.
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(They'd be Manchester orphans, though, right? Manchester was almost as much a Blitz target as London)
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Perhaps only part of the orphanage got sent to Misselthwaite and this is practically the first time some of these kids have had individual adult attention.
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If you ever do write it, however, I really like where all of this is going.
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(also, I don’t know if Pollyanna the amazon reviewer would feel better knowing that the tb vaccine (bcg) was around then, being developed in the 1920s, although the national program didn’t really kick in until the 50s. What those kids really needed was streptomycin, but that was the end of wwii)
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Think I read that one. Didn't like it.
I hope, if I ever write this, the winged horse has its own agenda for getting well and kicks some sense into Emmaline's head.
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* Usually set in a village somewhere in England between 1910 and 1945, in which terrible things may happen outside the world of the book, but in the book everybody bucks up and deals with daily life and village drama overtakes everything else and the end of the book is restoration to pastoral normalcy and maybe occasionally someone thinks of a relative or lover who is Over There and sighs meaningfully or maybe silently dabs a tear, and people might cope with rationing, and in one memorable case there was a German spy lurking in the woods who was captured by a villager with little fuss, but other than that it could be taken out of time. D.E. Stevenson is an exemplar of that genre.
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There are so many ways the author can separate kids from parents so the kids can have adventures. You don't even have to kill the parents, or make them horribly abusive. Send them off to war! Give somebody a disease with a long convalescence! Have a parent arrested on false charges and acquitted at the end!
Then her sister and mother burned to death, and she was evacuated. Then they found out she had TB.
Then the TB sanatorium fell over and sank into the swamp.
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