Customer Reviews

Coal Black Horse

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Coal Black Horse has a horse in it, but it really deals with the loss of innocence of a boy who is sent on a crazy mission to retrieve his father from the battlefield. This story is suspenseful, the characters are deep and memorable, and the atmosphere is timeless in the good way that Grapes of Wrath or The Old Man and the Sea are timeless. The human face of war is so insightfully drawn- the perfect details are used to convey such depth in just a short novel. At one point the boy thinks of War as something that the men of both armies have fought against, all together- but together they all lost. I had never heard of the author and it came as a wonderful surprise just how good this book is.

Molly (the author's daughter, see above review) is correct in saying that this novel may have roots in our current troubled experience in Iraq. But it references the experience of war in general not in specifics- as I say, timeless and therefore universal.

No, it's not about a horse. It's about you and me. Don't miss it.

I have to confess my personal connection, this is my father, the names are not a coincidence. Having said this, I am not required to like his work and I do not like all of it. We are both adults, we have our opinions and preferences. This book, however, is excellent. I would compare it to Cold Mountain or Disappearances in mood. Dark, funny, violent, fantastical but so painfully real. It is an exercise in grand storytelling. At the same time, this book is salient and timely. It takes place during the decline of the Civil War, when things were ugly, rivers running red, but the imagery, emotions, are here and now. The simultaneous horror and appeal of war, the brutal descriptions of violence and decay juxtaposed with those of beauty and elegance reverberate with the current state of our nation. I don't know if he intended this, I didn't ask him, but I feel like anything released at this time dealing with war cannot escape comparison. Upon finishing it (and it is one of those quick reads where you come to the end and are flustered that it passed so quickly) I, a staunch peace-monger, actually questioned how I feel about war. War is awful, many die, it scars the land, it is ugly business. But war can enrapture, and from war comes deep feeling and beautiful art. This book caused me wonder about why we wage war and how it changes us, all of us, how it becomes a part of us.

Coal Black Horse is a beautifully written, enduring story; elements of a traditional American coming-of-age story, accessibly lyrical, and intensely violently. Set in the Civil War Era South, the abject inhumanity encountered by Robey brings him fact-to-face with his fears, hopes, and ideas or faith. These ideas and ideals are reevaluated constantly in the search for his father and commitment to stay alive. One can never imagine how one would react under unswerving duress. I suspect that Robey's courage and experiences would put Coal Black Horse in the cannon of American story-telling for years to come. I often reference books like Child of God, 100 Years of Solitude, The Diceman, and Naked Lunch as all time favorite novels, and now Coal Black Horse has been added to that list!

I was so lost while reading it, I reread passages feeling my mind had wandered, only to find the words to be already as old friends. Although I was definitely lost, I missed my subway stop twice and once by two stations.

Olmstead's latest, COAL BLACK HORSE is a great read that will stay with you long after you finish the last sentence. This is my first book by Mr. Olmstead and it won't be my last. Only question I had after reading this book, is why I had not heard of Mr. Olmstead before? Everybody needs to be reading this guy, especially COAL BLACK HORSE. Buy it, read it, then read it again, it's that good. Seriously.

Too, on another note, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Olmstead at a book festival and we spoke for a good while, he's a very neat and generous man. It was a pleasure to speak with him as he openly talked about his new book and the writing process. I urge anybody who's debating on buying this book to just buy it. You won't be disappointed. The prose and language alone are good enough to carry this book through till the end, but, luckily for us it doesn't have too, because the plot is strong also.

Beyond belief. I purchased it on a vacation trip to SC. I drove my wife and daughter crazy (in a good way), reading paragraphs across the room. Wonderful prose....if you like this one, read Mark Spragg's "Where Rivers Change Direction". Both beautiful books and I feel fortunate to have read both.

I have to admit that in the first few pages, I wondered if Olmstead's love for antique words and less-common constructions would get in the way of telling the story. In short order, however, I stopped worrying about it because I was caught up in the action. When I finally put the book down, I realized that the language was the story, the story was the language, and there was no other way to present the narrative. I've rarely felt that satisfying sense of wholeness in other writing--fiction or nonfiction.

The book is spare, but the language evocative and rich. The sense of place is pitch perfect, even if from time to time you're not sure what place you're in. But that's OK; Robey Childs isn't sure either.

The book is unstinting about the ugliness of war, but there are also passages that speak to nobility, higher calling, and civility. It's a descriptive tightrope walked well.

What Olmstead has done with an essentially simple story set in a complicated time is breathtaking. I recommend Coal Black Horse without reservation.

I've been waiting to write a review for this book, thinking I'd come up with the language to do it justice. I can't. It's more than just words on pages; Coal Black Horse pulls you in and gives you the kind of reading experience you hope for every time you crack open a new book. You want to get lost in it. You want to dread having to finish it. You want to believe. It hardly ever happens, but Olmstead takes you there. Read the book.

Coal Black Horse tells the story of Robey Childs, a 14-year-old Virginian in the year of 1863. Robey's mother, learning of the death of Thomas Jackson, has a presentiment about her husband, who is serving with Lee in the Confederate Army. She dispatches Robey to bring him home and insists, "You must find him before July." Olmstead's bildungsromoan is framed perfectly by Hettie Childs words of instruction to her departing son, which she pronounces in Biblical cadences: "She told him there is a terror that men bring to the earth, to its water and air and its soil, and that he would meet these men on his journey and that his father was was one of these men, and...then she told him, without judgment, that someday he too might become one of these men." "Danger passes by those who face up to it," she concludes.

Robey's search for his father takes him across a blasted, danger-filled, terrain - war-scarred, brutal, lawless - and places him into contact with the men and women of his mother's prophesy, unhinged by violence and living outside the bubble of morality. His journey also brings him to the majestic black horse of the title, which, in Olmstead's surreal landscape, literally enchants men, filling them with the desire to possess, and is a potentially great prize for any desperado, deserter, or backshooter Robey might encounter.

Olmstead's treatment of the evolving relationship between boy and horse - the black horse has a history we never learn and is naturally worldlier and more perceptive than the boy - is lovingly handled. With a painterly eye, Olmstead produces beautiful, lapidary prose, even for vivid, horrifying passages of war and atrocity. He makes palpable, again, as Remarque and Crane and so many others have, the ultimate senselessness of war, and also the unalterable reality that men will nonetheless continue to wage wars - and be changed by them.

Here is another remarkable novel by a marvelously talented writer. Having now read his two most recent works, I look forward to the rest. Olmstead is near the top of my A-list, a writer who deserves to be known much better than he now is

"[W]e have chosen ourselves to be the chosen"??? What does that even mean? Delighted at the beginning, a little disappointed at the end, by which time the mounting deaths have become overwrought and the characters surpisingly distant with sometimes vague or unconvincing motivations. War is hell isn't exactly a new theme; does the novel have to be so heavy-handed in its gloom? All that said, for certain tastes (and you know who you are), this novel will be a pleasure. Poetic prose, striking imagery, and genuinely moving descriptions all set against the backdrop of the Civil War and an age when the landscape was a little less crowded than it is today. If lines such as the one quoted above don't bother you too much, add a star to the rating. For me, when they mount up as they tend to do toward the end of the novel, I get irritated.