Snowy River Brumby by Elyne Mitchell

Snowy River brumby by Elyne Mitchell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There is something rather perfect about Elyne Mitchell when she gets going and this is a book in which she gets going. It is part of a series, though perfectly readable in its own right, and tells the story of a family of brumbies and their connection with a family. This is a bald summary and a poor one for it gives you nothing of the achingly wild and wistful richness of Mitchell’s prose. There have been books of hers which I’ve struggled with and books which I’d immediately describe as classics and this, I think, is the good stuff. I don’t think it’s a classic but I think it’s rather delicious and tender and spine-tingling and that’s not a bad thing to be in the slightest, not when you have an author who is doing what she is good at and doing it very, very well.

I’ve often thought of pony books as something of an early romance, a way for young readers to reckon with the world about them and their position within it, a moment where we/they/us learn how to care for somebody else other than ourselves, and the slow, subtle magic of Snowy River Brumby is all of this, entirely. There are moment when it falters but barely, briefly, a stumble in the dark, a hoof slipping off stone, and then you’re back in the bush, in a countryside that can feel fiercely alien and yet somehow the most perfect, entrancing place in the world.

I love how these books feel, you know? I love the moments where you realise that something is going wrong the same moment that the horses do, when the weather turns and you realise the danger that’s out there, and that somehow, something is about to happen. I love how Mitchell trusts you to go with her (the faith of a good author in their reader is, I think, paramount), and how she trusts that you will stay with her.

Pony books give you everything, really, and more than that, they give you resonance and heart and something, perhaps ironically enough, profoundly human.

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