Cobbler's Dream

Monica Dickens

Ah. nostalgia. You'll never find a book today that features a horse named Nigger.

It's pretty pathetic to invoke the fifty-page rule on a book that runs only a hundred ninety-two pages, but I found myself forced to do so. I couldn't take any more of this tripe, Nigger aside. Cobbler's Dream, on which a sixties British TV series was based, purports to be the story of a farm for abused, injured, and retired horses, and how it affects the lives of two disenfranchised youth working there. (Despite not having got past page fifty, here's a prediction-- sometime before page 100, said two disaffected youths fall in love, but neither is willing to admit it to the other, fearing rejection, before page 189. Someone else can read it, if they can stomach it, and tell me if I'm right.) What it actually is is a political tract about how awful the abuse of animals is, and how much the British really do love horses. (Which surprises someone who inhabits the horse world and hears British race callers and columnists routinely refer to horses as "it" rather than by sex.) Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with sticking a message in your book, as long as you do it with a little finesse. "Finesse" is not defined as stopping the action (not that there is any action in the first fifty pages of this book, nor is there drama, character definition, or anything else that makes a book readable) every couple of pages to insert another few paragraphs on how hideous the British used to treat their horses, and that was awful, but now everything's just peachy.

Godawful. Avoid at all costs.