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The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel by David Wroblewski |
The God of Animals: A Novelby Aryn Kyle |
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From an award-winning and talented young novelist comes one of the most exciting fiction debuts in years: a breathtaking and beautiful novel set on a horse ranch in small-town Colorado.
When her older sister runs away to marry a rodeo cowboy, Alice Winston is left to bear the brunt of her family's troubles -- a depressed, bedridden mother; a reticent, overworked father; and a run-down horse ranch. As the hottest summer in fifteen years unfolds and bills pile up, Alice is torn between dreams of escaping the loneliness of her duty-filled life and a longing to help her father mend their family and the ranch.
To make ends meet, the Winstons board the pampered horses of rich neighbors, and for the first time Alice confronts the power and security that class and wealth provide. As her family and their well-being become intertwined with the lives of their clients, Alice is drawn into an adult world of secrets and hard truths, and soon discovers that people -- including herself -- can be cruel, can lie and cheat, and every once in a while, can do something heartbreaking and selfless. Ultimately, Alice and her family must weather a devastating betrayal and a shocking, violent series of events that will test their love and prove the power of forgiveness.
A wise and astonishing novel about the different guises of love and the often steep tolls on the road to adulthood, The God of Animals is a haunting, unforgettable debut.
From Amazon.com Review:
The Significant Seven Spotlight Title, March 2007: Aryn Kyle's haunting coming-of-age novel is the kind of book that you want to share with everyone you know. Twelve-year-old Alice Winston is growing up fast on her father's run-down horse ranch--coping with the death of a classmate and the absence of her older sister (who ran off with a rodeo cowboy), trying to understand her depressed and bedridden mother, and attempting to earn the love and admiration of her reticent, weary father. Lyrical, powerful, and unforgettable, The God of Animals is our must-read, must-own, must-share book for March. --Daphne Durham
Amazon.com
With the sure hand of a seasoned writer, Aryn Kyle has crafted a brilliant debut with her novel, The God of Animals. 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."
See all 10 of Aryn Kyle's favorite coming-of-age novels (with commentary)
With the sure hand of a seasoned writer, Aryn Kyle has crafted a brilliant debut with her novel, The God of Animals. 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. --Valerie Ryan
10 Second Interview: A Few Words with Aryn Kyle
Q: In 2004, your short story "Foaling Season," the 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?
A: Three years passed between the time that I finished the short story and the time I returned to expand it into a novel. I was always interested in the characters and in the town which the story takes place, but after the story was published, I assumed I was done with them. In the aftermath of graduate school and a failed attempt at another novel, I found myself living back in my hometown of Grand Junction, Colorado, the town that Desert Valley is loosely based upon. More and more, I caught myself thinking about Alice again. I was interested in how the town had changed over the years, in the way that a tide of money and commercial culture was displacing the old families and the old ways. But mostly, I was interested in Alice's family, and in Alice's struggle to make a place for herself in a world that seems to have no place for her. The short story ended before she could really make any headway. I became curious as to where she might go and who she might become if the events of the story continued into the wider space of a novel. The story of The God of Animals starts with Chapter One, but I've always felt that the novel really starts with the second chapter.
Q: How much of your adolescence and personal experience are incorporated into your novel? Like Alice, did you ride horses growing up in Colorado?
A: Lots? None? This is a tricky question to answer. As far as lifestyle and experience, my own adolescence could not have been more different from Alice's. I didn't grow up on a ranch; didn't have a sister; my mother got out of bed and went to work every day. But adolescence is adolescence. Like Alice, I certainly know about loneliness, about longing, about regret, and about the confusion of trying to live in the world without really understanding it. Though, if I were going to be perfectly honest, I would have to admit that these are all things I found myself working through in my twenties, rather than in my teens. I did take riding lessons when I was about Alice's age, and I competed in a few local horse shows. It was such a different world from the one I'd grown up in, and though I gave it up when I started high school, I guess it made a pretty big impression on me.
Q: How did you think of the title?
A: The title didn't come to me until I'd finished the book. I was starting to panic a bit, figuring that no one would be too interested in publishing a book called Novel, which is what I'd named the file on my computer. So I did the only thing I could think of--I frantically thumbed through the pages of the draft waiting for something to pop out at me. I reread the scene between Alice and Mr. Delmar where they discuss God and spirituality. Something about that scene seemed to encapsulate some of the greater themes of the novel, the uncertainty Alice has about the world, her desire to believe in something larger than herself, her fears regarding isolation and loneliness.
Q: Do you have another novel in the works?
A: Lately, I've been working mainly on short stories. It's kind of hard for me to spend so much time working on one project, then dive into another. I've needed the time to get Alice's voice out of my head before I commit to another novel. But I do have a second novel underway--I'm superstitious, though, and it seems like bad luck to talk about something while its still in the works. Mostly, my writing starts with the characters, with understanding their flaws and their desires. Plot, for me, seems to come later, after I know what my characters want, and what they're willing to sacrifice to get it.
Q: In 2004, your short story "Foaling Season," the 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? A: Three years passed between the time that I finished the short story and the time I returned to expand it into a novel. I was always interested in the characters and in the town which the story takes place, but after the story was published, I assumed I was done with them. In the aftermath of graduate school and a failed attempt at another novel, I found myself living back in my hometown of Grand Junction, Colorado, the town that Desert Valley is loosely based upon. More and more, I caught myself thinking about Alice again. I was interested in how the town had changed over the years, in the way that a tide of money and commercial culture was displacing the old families and the old ways. But mostly, I was interested in Alice's family, and in Alice's struggle to make a place for herself in a world that seems to have no place for her. The short story ended before she could really make any headway. I became curious as to where she might go and who she might become if the events of the story continued into the wider space of a novel. The story of The God of Animals starts with Chapter One, but I've always felt that the novel really starts with the second chapter.
Q: How much of your adolescence and personal experience are incorporated into your novel? Like Alice, did you ride horses growing up in Colorado?
A: Lots? None? This is a tricky question to answer. As far as lifestyle and experience, my own adolescence could not have been more different from Alice's. I didn't grow up on a ranch; didn't have a sister; my mother got out of bed and went to work every day. But adolescence is adolescence. Like Alice, I certainly know about loneliness, about longing, about regret, and about the confusion of trying to live in the world without really understanding it. Though, if I were going to be perfectly honest, I would have to admit that these are all things I found myself working through in my twenties, rather than in my teens. I did take riding lessons when I was about Alice's age, and I competed in a few local horse shows. It was such a different world from the one I'd grown up in, and though I gave it up when I started high school, I guess it made a pretty big impression on me.
Q: How did you think of the title?
A: The title didn't come to me until I'd finished the book. I was starting to panic a bit, figuring that no one would be too interested in publishing a book called Novel, which is what I'd named the file on my computer. So I did the only thing I could think of--I frantically thumbed through the pages of the draft waiting for something to pop out at me. I reread the scene between Alice and Mr. Delmar where they discuss God and spirituality. Something about that scene seemed to encapsulate some of the greater themes of the novel, the uncertainty Alice has about the world, her desire to believe in something larger than herself, her fears regarding isolation and loneliness.
Q: Do you have another novel in the works?
A: Lately, I've been working mainly on short stories. It's kind of hard for me to spend so much time working on one project, then dive into another. I've needed the time to get Alice's voice out of my head before I commit to another novel. But I do have a second novel underway--I'm superstitious, though, and it seems like bad luck to talk about something while its still in the works. Mostly, my writing starts with the characters, with understanding their flaws and their desires. Plot, for me, seems to come later, after I know what my characters want, and what they're willing to sacrifice to get it.
Aryn Kyle's Favorite Coming-of-Age Novels
 Housekeeping |  That Night |  Thumbsucker |  Ghostworld |  Atonement |
See all 10 of Aryn Kyle's favorite coming-of-age novels (with commentary)
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The God of Animals: A Novel |
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The God of Animals: A Novel |
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The God of Animals: A Novel |
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Hard to buy into -  |
The God of Animals: A Novel Review |
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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! |
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not for anyone who knows anything about horses -  |
The God of Animals: A Novel Review |
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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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Should have ended with the first chapter - |
The God of Animals: A Novel Review |
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I hated this book - Chapters 2 through 4 anyway... I couldn't read any more. It's too depressing and as someone who grew up around horses, I found it to take a very unrealistic approach to both the trainer and the rich clients.
I can see why the first chapter won a national award however - its well written and draws the reader in. But from there the book just goes downhill. |
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Sad, horrifying, and definitely not "accurate horse lore" -  |
The God of Animals: A Novel Review |
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The worst thing about this depressing book is, it's not clear whether the author knows exactly how little her characters know about horses. The father is a sort of pastiche of every unthinking, power-crazy jerk who ever tried to beat a horse into submission because he didn't have the skills to teach it anything. Every single detail, from the unnecessarily traumatic weaning to the isolation and neglect of the studs (not to mention the whole business of RIDING THE WEANLING!!!) to their entire interaction with that poor Paint filly just shouts "this guy has spent his whole life around horses--and hasn't learned a single thing about them." The self-absorbed and foolish boarders may represent some horse people somewhere, but I've never met any, and I have spent a lot of time at boarding stables. Even the skillful daughter who tries to demonstrate Cap's devotion to her--by running him through a hands-off showmanship pattern--is deluded and sad. Pretty nearly every showmanship horse I know will do the very same thing for practically any decent handler. It's training, not devotion.
Read this for the story of a family in crisis who lack the insight and strength to help themselves. But be aware, their treatment of their horses is a symptom of just how messed up they are. It is, in every respect, decidedly NOT how any intelligent horse person deals with horses. If Kyle thinks it is, she really needs to get better equestrian mentors. |
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sad and beautiful coming-of-age novel -  |
The God of Animals: A Novel Review |
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This is a realistic coming-of-age novel set in death valley. Alice and her family make a living off their horse ranch. There is a lot of work for Alice and her dad when the older sister leaves with her boyfriend. The book isn't really about horses, even though Alice's relationship to these animals is one of the wonderful things about this story. This beautifully written tale is about hard work, man vs. nature, taking chances, compassion. There is a lot of involvement with horses, because the family and even the community is dependant on these creatures for their livelihood. But the point is the underlying tension in each scene, since so much is at stake. I loved Alice's relationship to the horses, especially when she learns to ride for a contest. She is an insightful protagonist and we get to experience her triumps and failures. We get to see her father, who has a gift for training horses, try to make a living off of these beasts. Her mom stays in bed all day, depressed, but Alice, at twelve, is not too judgemental yet about her mom. She doesn't have time to be, with all her responsibilities before her. As an escape, she developes a crush on her teacher. Things become even more dramatic when the sister shows up. Five stars. I loved it. |
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