What is it with these "children's horse classics?" Somehow, I missed reading this one myself when I was a horse-crazy kid. I can't believe people rave about this book as a good horse book for children.
In all fairness to the author, I'm not sure she ever intended My Friend Flicka to be a children's book. While her long, descriptive language doesn't appeal to me, (and probably will not to most children, either), she is obviously a talented writer. Here's an example, one of many passages with extensive details about things with little relevance to the story line.
She had been careful of her hands with their long pointed fingers and almond shaped nails, and they were as smooth as the brown eggs that came from the Rhode Island Red hens. When she talked, she gestured with them, [the hens? the eggs? or her fingers? :)] and they had that artless look, the lack of any clutch or grasp, the question in the bent back, reaching finger tips, which always suggests a poetic nature. Rob often watched them, thinking that they moved like something that was helpless, seawood floating - Ken had the same hands. p. 42
Eleven-year-old Ken McLaughlin, a day dreamer, is not living up to his father, Rob's, expectations. At the Goose Bar Ranch in 1940 Wyoming, Ken is his mother, Nell's, favorite, while Ken's brother, Howard, is the father's favored son. Ken dreams of having his own horse to raise and train, however Rob expects him to leave his dreamy ways behind before he gives him one.
The summer begins with the family receiving Ken's bad report card along with the news that he will have to repeat the fifth grade. The school indicates it is due to carelessness and inattention rather than lack of ability.
"Just a matter of curiosity, how do you go about it to get a zero in an examination? Forty in history? Seventeen in arithmetic! But a zero! Just as one man to another what goes on in your head?" chap 2
The father's language is coarse/profane throughout the book, including taking God's name in vain. A few examples are shown here, but these are by no means all of them.
"It's tough enough for one man to move a hundred horses, half of them bronco, or loco, all of them fresh as h*** after a winter out, without a kid along to be popping his head up somewhere..." p. 16
"By G**, I'll not do it again. Sick or well, they can take their chances." p. 45
"D***** if I won't quit. I quit the Army. Now the ranch ... No. Not licked yet, not by a d***** sight." p. 48
"Give him a colt because he d*** near stampeded the whole brood mare bunch over the Rock Slide."
"I ought to shoot 'em all. I would, too, if they weren't so d***** fast."
"raced along the fence h*** for leather." p. 50
"For G**'s sake!" p. 51
"In G**'s name!" p. 62
She's all cut and scarred up already from tearing through barbed wire after that b**** of a mother of hers. p. 126
In one scene, a ranch hand, Tim, is drawing a picture of a "voluptuous-hipped young woman."
"The room [in the bunkhouse] was already lavishly decorated with Tim's drawings, all of them, apparently, images of the same seductive female in different poses." p. 49
Nell finally succeeds in convincing her husband that giving Ken a horse might help him mature. Rob gives Ken a week to choose one. During this time, the vet arrives to geld a crop of two year olds. This includes some rather stark scenes.
"Rob, don't let them see the gelding."
"They might as well. They have to know, sooner or later." ...
Nell sighed as she rose to clear the table. "A bloody day. I hope they get through all right." p. 67The colt looked terrified, and began to gallop around the corral. "The faster he goes the harder he falls," said Doc jocularly.
... He went down with a crash, and Tim was kneeling on his head before he could move. McLaughlin and Gus tied his feet. Doc went in with his knife, and the colt screamed and tried to struggle. It was over in a minute. They loosed him and he got to his feet. They opened the gate into the big corral, and the colt trotted in there and stood by the fence, head hanging down, blood streaming. p. 72Tim, raking the strings and lumps of flesh and bloody skin into a pile, laughed and said, "If it was lambs now, we'd be having lamb fry for supper." p. 73
"here's a risling," he [Doc] said. "I'll have a time with this one. There's only one down - what about it? Shall I go in after the other?"
... the colt screamed and struggled terribly. Before the operation was over, he too was quiet, lying inert while the bright streams of his blood darkened on the sand. Doc's arms were red to the elbow.
The "risling" horse later dies as a result of this operation. he's tied to the back of a truck and dragged to an old mine shaft where he's dropped 300 feet. Another horse develops an infection from the gelding and nearly dies.
Ken envisions this happening to his colt and decides to take a filly instead, to avoid the gelding procedure.
he saw it suddenly as clearly as if it was there before him, a bright golden sorrel, like Banner - he saw the blood running down its legs - Sharp pains ran through him and sobs strangled him. p. 75
They do it to all the horses in the world, Ken thought, ... and to all the steers ... all the whethers ... Men weren't gelded, boys weren't, but male animals, the world over, being gelded and changed and never male again - right at this minute, thousands of knives cutting, oceans of blood running, men bending over hog-tied horses- p. 77
Rocket's foal was killed by a mountain lion. The wildcat is still in the area and they all contemplate what it might attack next.
The spinal cord was severed in two places at the base of the neck. It had not been entirely eaten, the hide was intact on the haunches, the head crushed, parts of the bones of the legs scattered some distance around. p. 91
Where was the author going with this? (speaking of the mother). I don't know, but it seems mildly inappropriate or suggestive.
Always at night her fatigue was a positive pressing thing. She could feel it all through her, a heavy, sweet aching. And yielding to it was like sinking into a sucking depth. Her thoughts began to scatter into grotesque formations like pieces of broken glass. She felt Rob's cheek on her hair. He was kissing her softly, all over her cheek and temple and down to the corner of her mouth. He thinks I'm asleep, she thought, and breathed more evenly and deeply, her eyes closed. So - dead - tired - the deep place drawing her down into unconsciousness- Rob getting her all into his arms and the curve of his body - p. 99
Ken had been given a week to choose a yearling. Much to his father's disappointment, he chooses the yearling filly of Rocket, the horse Rob considers "loco." The filly's grandsire is Albino, another "loco" horse. I'm not sure if that was just a name or whether they actually considered the horse an albino. In reality, there are no albino horses. Even white horses are relatively rare. A true albino has pink skin and red eyes.
When someone is interested in buying Rocket as a racehorse, they chase after the mare in a car, but she escapes through a fence. When they catch her and try to get Rocket into a chute to load her into a truck, the mare jerks her head up and hits Rob in the face. They get Rocket into the truck, but as they're leaving and driving under the ranch sign, the mare rears, hits her head on the sign, and dies. She's unceremoniously dumped down the mine shaft, and Rob vows to round up and sell all the horses from Albino's line.
"She'll go through every fence, the b****." p. 135
Ken saw the blood spurt from his father's eye... p. 143
"I'm glad of it. No more trouble with that G** d*** old b**** - wish I'd shot her and all the rest of her tribe years ago - Gus, take the truck up to the old mine and dump her in - p. 146
The boys saw the great body plunge, caroming from side to side, the hoofs turn up, the mane and tail whipping and winding-then the darkness swallowed her. Nothing - and a long silence before the jarring thud three hundred feet below... p. 147
In trying to catch Flicka for Ken, the filly somersaults through a wire fence. Ranch hand Gus helps Ken care for the filly, who isn't expected to recover. This begins a long section of Ken caring for the filly, who at first appears to improve, but then her wounds become infected and she loses a lot of weight. Rob hadn't seen the filly for a while and when he does, he is shocked by her awful appearance.
What, in G**'s name, is that? ... Pull out of it? She's dead already. ... That's the end. I won't have a thing like that on my place. p. 252
To allow an animal to die a lingering death was something his father would not do. Flicka was to be shot. p. 253
The night before the filly is to be shot, Ken slips out of the house late at night and finds her lying in a stream. Ken pulls her head onto his lap and lies with her in the water all night. The cool running water heals the filly's infection. The next morning, Gus finds Ken and Flicka in the stream. He'd gone to shoot the horse, but seeing some signs of improvement, he decides to wait. Ken is taken to the ranch house, very sick with a high fever, later delirious and with pneumonia.
Gus and Tim rig up a sling to get Flicka up on her feet, disregarding Rob's order to shoot her. When Rob finds out the horse hadn't been shot, he gets the gun to do it himself. Rob goes to the area where Flicka is, sees the mountain lion and shoots at it but misses. Ken hears the gun and thinks it was for Flicka. Rob spends the night in a rainstorm watching over the filly. The lion returns in the morning and Rob kills it.
Surprisingly, during his long weeks of recovery, no one tells Ken that Flicka is alive. The doctor thought that even good news might be a shock and cause him harm. By winter, both Ken and Flicka have recovered.
The book contains some smoking and drinking. What struck me the most, in addition to the profuse profanity, were the harsh and graphic depictions of animal death and suffering. In addition to the ones I've included in this review, there are descriptions of a cow whose udder became entangled in barbed wire, a bunch of dead calves in a truck, a flock of sheep killed by hail, and the details of a calf killed and eaten by the mountain lion.
Author: Mary O’Hara
Originally Published: 1941
Current edition: 2008
Current Publisher: HarperCollins
Language: English
Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 9780061374630
Genre: fiction
Reviewer: Vicki Watson, Sonrise Stable Books
Review Date: 2024-06-04
Agree or disagree? Leave any comments or questions below.
