Author: Michael Morpugo
Publisher: Scholastic
Rating: WARTY!
Read perfectly well by John Keating.
Welcome to the foal-ie Berserk! I listened to this audio book because it was a story which has become popular and was made into a movie, although how they got a two hour movie from what is essentially a short story (4 disk CD audio) I don’t know. I haven't seen the movie, but I imagine it’s full of tear-jerking violins and swelling orchestral romps. I have to say up front that I was not impressed with this novel.
I can see the appeal of anthopomorphizing animals for young children who are charmingly undiscriminating up through a certain age, but to write one evidently aimed at older children which makes the horse appear to have every faculty a human does is misguided at best, and nonsensical at worst, especially when written in the maudlin way this was written. I mean, let’s face it, there is no mystery here. There are no surprises in store. We know how it’s going to end before we start.
The representation of the horse was so unrealistic it was almost a parody and I found myself laughing frequently. I should say here that the reading by John Keating was excellent. He has a charming voice, but the voice can’t actually change poor material, so I am sorry his effort was so inadequately supported by what he had to read.
The basic story is set in the early years of the 20th century, and is about a horse which is bought by a caricature-ish bad-guy farmer, who has an equally caricatured good-guy son who actually grows up with the young horse, and of course has a magical bond with it. Dad sells off this horse to the army when World War One breaks out, and off goes "Joey" the horse to show what a stud he is on the front lines, followed by the son's promise that they'll meet again. Joey endures charging the enemy, hauling the wounded, and on and one until the war is over, and he reunites with the lad.
I skipped the third disk out of boredom, so I can't speak to events there, but the ending was so trite as to be sickening. I cannot in good faith recommend this story unless you're deeply into totally artificial tear-jerkers.
