Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

Publication date/ Length: 2009 / 8 Discs

Synopsis (from the back cover): Born tough, Lily shoed her first horse at age six, moved to the western frontier at age fifteen, and soon learned to drive a car and fly an airplane. Always filled with adventure, Lily’s life held witness to several disasters, heartbreaks, and wars.

Review: What a pleasure this “true life novel” was to read! I listened (rather than read) it simply because the wait was shorter at my library and I had so enjoyed Glass Castle, I was very excited to read Walls’ second effort.  However, when it arrived and I saw that Walls had read it herself, I was nervous.  I rarely find that authors are up to the task of reading their own work.  I was so turned off by Kingsolver’s condescending, smug tone, I still haven’t returned to Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.  Rita Brown’s smoker’s rasp made me so uncomfortable, I had to stop after a few minutes. 

Reading a story aloud is harder than most would imagine — breath control, punctuation awareness, melody, voice, dialog, I could go on and on…  I had the unique experience of reading the first few chapters of Dickens’ Great Expectations aloud to 9th graders for many, many years (holy breath control!) with the pressure of presenting the artistry (and meaning) of Dickens’ circuitous syntax and making it manageable and alluring.  So, I was a little worried when Walls seemed to treat commas as periods in her reading.  However, I stuck with her, got used to the unusual pauses, and ended up loving how Walls’ voice soon became her grandmother’s.

Walls describes Half Broke Horses as a “true life novel” — she intially set out to write her mother’s story (who can forget Rose Mary from The Glass Castle), but ended up instead telling her grandmother’s story (at Rose Mary’s suggestion).  However, since Lily died when Walls was 8, she couldn’t interview her directly and hesitated to represent this work as an autobiography (and did not want to restrain her artistic license, either).  So, Walls writes Lily’s story using first person and what a wonderful tale she tells!  Truly the best genre for this novel is Western/Adventure — Lily is a pioneering hero and, in many regards, the type of woman every girl would want to be. 

Notice I wrote “in most regards” — honestly, Lily is a woman who did not have an strong mother-figure in her life, and then became a less than perfect mother herself.  I felt very sympathetic toward Rose Mary after reading this — the precedents for her later life (and own mothering style) are clearly evident, and I wanted to steal her away from every boarding school she was sent to.  In fact, if Walls has chosen to be a mother herself, I would love for her next memoir to recount this journey.  She comes from a long line of strong-willed, untraditional women who excel at so many things, with the glaring exception of motherhood.

However, every other adventure Lily undertakes is fascinating, exciting, admirable and so fun to read.  While very different from The Glass Castle in voice and content, I enjoyed it just as much and would strongly recommend it to just about any reader I know.

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