book review

Sheep May Safely Graze, L.M. Clancy, 2015, 423 pages, paperback, $14.95, available at AmazonIrish sporting artist Liam Clancy has expanded his repertoire. He’s written a novel.

While foxhunting, prodigious drinking, and sex are well-handled ingredients of Clancy’s story—which takes place mostly in Ireland and England—those ingredients are only a framework upon which hangs a larger story of people, relationships, and the times. Our times: the Millennial, hunt sabs, the pathos of the hoof and mouth epidemic, the runup to the hunting ban, the dagger thrust into the heart of the English countryside by a government focused elsewhere.

If the publishing industry were not in turmoil, as it has been for the last decade at least, and if publishers would give first-time novelists half-a-chance, Clancy’s book could well replace titles by authors with household names that now occupy undeserved spots on the Best Seller lists. His dialog crackles, and his characters are wholly-formed individuals that you will care greatly for. Think of Maeve Binchy on steroids.

Prophet of Paradise, J. Harris Anderson, Blue Cardinal Press, 2013, paper, 483 pages, $22.95With foxhunting’s rites and traditions, its vestments and rich history, and even its own patron saint, it was but a short leap for author J. Harris Anderson to christen the chase as a religion in “The Prophet of Paradise,” his novel about sects and sex in the Virginia Hunt Country.

Ryman McKendrick, Joint-Master of Montfair Hunt, takes a tumble when his horse is startled by a large buck with something glowing in its rack. McKendrick is convinced that the illuminated object is a cross, and when the Montfair begins to see the best foxhunting—and sex—in Virginia, McKendrick is sure that he is the chosen one to spread the word about venery. He founds the Ancient and Venerable Church of Ars Venatica and is soon leading hunt members in prayer and preaching from “The Foxhunter’s Faith” before each meet.

Perkunas Press, 2013
Paperback from Amazon, e-book
from Amazon and the publisherPerkunas Press, 2013
Paperback from Amazon, e-book
from Amazon and the publisherAuthor and avid foxhunter Karen Myers continues the adventures of huntsman George Talbot Traherne of Virginia, who found himself inexplicably pulled into a realm of fae and immortals in her first novel, To Carry the Horn: The Hounds of Annwn.
 
Her second and third novels, The Ways of Winter and King of the May plunge George deeper into the lives of the fascinating characters who inhabit this mysterious otherworld, where it is not always clear who is friend and who is foe.  George discovers that he is related to the rulers of this ancient domain, which seems to have once paralleled that of humans. But he possesses godlike powers that not even the wisest of the fae with their magic and their charms fully understand.

Throughout all three novels, Myers weaves the myth of the Great Hunt and the Hounds of Annwn, which belong to the antlered god, Cernunnos. The hounds, which hunt stag and man, were bestowed by Cernunnos upon George's kinsman, Gwyn ap Nudd, the Prince of Annwn, and are the secret to the prince's power. Without the hounds, Gwyn loses all. George discovers magical skills of his own as he struggles to keep his hounds safe so that the Great Hunt on Nos Galan Gaeaf, or All Hallows’ Eve, can take place.

The Simple Game:

An Irish Jockey’s Memoir

by Thomas Foley

Foreword by Otto Thorwarth

Caballo Press of Ann Arbor Book, Ann Arbor, Michigan

2010, 163 pages, ISBN-13: 9780982476659

Thomas Foley was an empty-headed (by his account) seventeen-year-old when he came to America from Ireland to pursue a career in jump racing. This month he will be seen by millions of movie goers as he plays the part of Secretariat’s exercise boy in Walt Disney’s long-hyped movie about the great racehorse. Between the two events, which bracket a period of twelve or thirteen years, young Foley has experienced a bit of life.