Customer Reviews

Grey Horse

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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.

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."

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.

I first read R.A. MacAvoy's "Tea with the Black Dragon" many years ago, and it remain one of my favorite books. So I was so glad to see some of her other books being reissued.

The Grey Horse is a lovely, charming fantasy that works on so many levels. Set in an 1881 village in Ireland, it is the story of a fairy horse, Rauri, who falls in love with a village girl and wants to marry her. And yet it is so much more than that!

What could have been a trite, two-dimensional story by another writer comes alive in the hands of R.A. MacAvoy for her characters are alive and vivid. Rauri is not an elegant, ethereal fairy, but an earthy, sometimes confused man who shares much of the stubborness and behavior of the sturdy Connemara pony he often turns into. Not innately clever, he has "horse sense" and a good nature that is very appealing. His heart's desire, Maire, is likewise not the usual fairy tale heroine. She is a big girl, stubborn, and full of fire, not as pretty as her petite sister, but of infinitely more worth.

Underneath the romance between Rauiri and Maire lies the struggle of the Irish people to assert their independence against the English overlords. The struggle of the Irish peasants to keep their connection to their land while dealing with a foreign culture (English) and the struggle of the fairy to fit into a foreign culture (Human) while retaining his deeper and more ancient connection to the land gives the book an interesting dynamic tension.

This book is one of the more interesting fantasies, and will retain a place on my bookshelf for future reading!

Not only an engrossing tale, the author's style of writing and word play captivate you from page one and makes you wish for more at story's end. In the middle of my second reading, I find it even more enjoyable the second time around.

Highly recommended.

What more could a girl want? the book starts out Henry Rafferty, an Irish horse trader walking home and spying a lone gray horse watching him from atop a hill. The moment Rafferty sit upon the horse he knows that his life will never be the same again.

For the horse in in truth Ruari, a puka come to Connemara to win the heart of a local girl. He touches the lives of everyone around him to the local land lord, to the priest of the parish. The magic of Ireland comes through with Ms. Avery's colorful writting. The magic of horses also comes through for this book is masterfully written. My only complaint is that it ends! :)

this ultimate 'horse' story. Didn't want the story to end...the sign of a good tale. thank you Ruth!

This book has been on my top favorite list since it was given to me as a gift 10 years ago. It's an inspiration for laughter and love. :)

I read this book about a year ago, and fell in love with it. The magic that takes place in the plot is unbelivable, and wonderfully so. R.A.Macavoy has realistic characters set in the mystic lands of Ireland. I would most deffinately reccomend this book for all readers.

When a grey stallion shows up in a small Irish community, many lives are affected. He reveals himself to be a Puka, or faery horse, visiting in hopes of winning the heart of a local girl.

Rory, the Puka, becomes embroiled in the lives of his hosts and friends as the heated politics of the time bring danger to the peaceful community.