Grey Horse [Mass Market Paperback]

R.A. Macavoy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1987

Set against the colorful and magical backdrop of Ireland, The Grey Horse chronicles a time when the Irish people suffered under harsh English overlords who sought to destroy their culture and way of life. Into the Irish town of Carraroe, a magnificent, completely grey stallion appears. The horse brings with him the promise of better times and magical happenings, for he is actually the shape-shifted form of Ruairi MacEibhir, journeyed to such a time of danger in order to win the hand of the woman he loves.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

-I have been a MacAvoy fan since TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON. No fantasy writer working today has a defter touch with Irish magic, and I have rarely encountered a more beguiling character than Urairi MacEibhir. Not only is the story exciting, but the characters are memorable-To read THE GREY HORSE is to spend time in several magical worlds at once-that of the horse, of Ireland, and of MacAvoy-s dazzling imagination.- -Morgan Llywelyn, author of LION OF IRELAND --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Spectra; First Edition edition (April 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553265571
• ISBN-13: 978-0553265576
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #272,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fairy Tale with a Twist, December 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Grey Horse (Paperback)

The Grey Horse is one of the standouts in the recent crop of modern fairy tales. MacAvoy explores the same Irish angst that more mainstream writers like Brendan O'Carroll and the McCourt brothers have tackled. However, she avoids bludgeoning the reader with the misery of being Irish. If you don't care for the Big Themes, you can just read it as a love story with a lot of horses.
Around the end of the 19th century, an Irish horse fairy falls in love with a mortal woman and tries to win her affection by assimilating into the communtity. MacAvoy, in exploring the puca's attempts to fit in, reveals how the Irish themselves are estranged in some way from their country and their communtity. Parents don't understand their children, men don't understand women, the gentry fit in with neither the English nor their lower class neighbors, the rural population distrusts outsiders, and so forth.
I liked that the love interest is the strong smart woman instead of the fatuous blond. The story is written for adults, but I wouldn't hesitate to give it to an adolescent. Prissyness info: I can't remember any bad language. A few people get damaged or killed in morally appropriate circumstances. It is mentioned that horses are not monogamous, and women should consider the consequences of certain actions involving men.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kiss me, I'm Irish, August 10, 2002

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Grey Horse (Paperback)

R.A. MacAvoy, whose debut novel was "Tea with a Black Dragon," has written another charming, but lesser known fantasy called "The Grey Horse." Its story takes place in 1881, in County Connemara, Ireland, during the time when the Irish National Land League was trying to oust foreign (English) landlords and teach the local farmers to stand up for their rights to fair rents and fixed tenure on the land. Irish revolutionaries are an integral part of MacAvoy's landscape, but they enhance the fantasy rather than intrude upon it.

As the novel begins, the old horse trainer, Anrai Õ Reachtaire discovers a púca (fairy horse) on his way to the village of Carraroe. He mistakes it for a strayed Connemara pony stallion, standing alone on a hill, without hobble or halter. The púca kneels, inciting Anrai to mount (what horseman could resist such a fair invitation?), and off they gallop on one of Fantasy's best and funniest wild rides.

Anrai finally manages to throw a rope halter over the pony's head:

"Anrai felt a jolt as through the horse had shied in place. Its sides went as stiff as wood. It hopped and trembled and before Anrai's eyes began to steam. Startled himself by this reaction, Anrai very warily tied the lead rope to both sides of the mouthpiece, making a sort of bridle out of the halter. 'Don't tell me you're a stranger to the old rope halter, my lad,' he whispered gently, close to the horse's ear. He saw a round eye ringed with white, and the long, unkempt yellow tail switched left to right. Anrai had a sinking feeling there would be a fight between himself and this horse on the stones of Knockduff Peak.

"But he had to go home. At this season, there were no more than two more hours of light and likely no visible moon after that. He gave the horse an experimental squeeze of the legs. In perfect obedience it moved down the mountainside."

Once haltered, the púca has to obey Anrai. They canter home, and the old man spends several weeks trying to find the pony's unknown owner. Meanwhile, although he grows fond of the grey, he obeys a hunch to leave its halter on. It isn't until Anrai decides the stallion is really his to keep that he attempts to perform a minor operation on him---he already has two stud horses in his barn and doesn't need a third. He and his stablehand strap the grey into a chute, and Anrai asks for his knife:

"The grey horse gave a convulsion that shook the oak posts, so deeply sunk into stone. The front straps broke, and it rose up screaming, not as the furious chestnut had screamed, but very like a man.

"It stood, and seemed to dwindle, and then toppled over in confusion. It shouted, 'By heaven, man! Look what you are about!' And then there was no horse."
Anrai, in the sudden throes of heart failure, manages to remove his halter from the púca, and the horse-turned-man promptly saves his life.

We learn why the púca, whose name is Ruairi MacEibhir has decided, after many centuries, to return to the haunts of man. He has fallen in love with one of the village women and wants to court her in the guise of Anrai's stablehand.

The courting of Máire NiStandún takes the rest of the book, as she is not sure she wants to marry a sometime-man sometime-horse. The land revolt swirls on around the quarreling couple. Old Anrai challenges a half-English landowner to a match race: the landlord's chestnut Thoroughbred against his grey Connemara stallion. Anrai's no-good son deserts from the British army and slinks home to cause all sorts of trouble. The local priest attempts to baptize Anrai's new stablehand---the púca survives his baptism, although the priest almost doesn't.

Basically, MacAvoy has written a story of life in a small, nineteenth-century Connemara village, with a horse-fairy thrown in to really get the Irish up. Even if you've read every other Celtic fantasy to hit the shelves (there seem to be a million of them), you'll not have found one as entrancing, or as madly Gaelic as "The Grey Horse."

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Irish without the twee, July 14, 2000

By 

"wyvernfriend" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Grey Horse (Paperback)

Set in the early part of the last century in Ireland this is a love story with a difference. A shapeshifter is looking for love and finds it with one of two sisters. Engrosing, well written and my copy is well read, the details of Irish life are interesting without being condescending.