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Foal's Bread
The sound of horses' hooves turns hollow on the farms west of Wirri. If a man can still ride, if he hasn't totally lost the use of his legs, if he hasn't died to the part of his heart that understands such things, then he should go for a gallop. At the very least he should stand at the road by the river imagining that he's pushing a horse up the steep hill that leads to the house on the farm once known as One Tree.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
39 people are currently reading
1205 people want to read
About the author
Gillian Mears
19 books28 followersGillian Mears was an Australian short story writer and novelist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 203 reviews
October 17, 2021
Hard to review this one. This lady is a great writer, obviously very clever and on the top of her game, but with a subject matter so dark it was hard to enjoy. Maybe if you were a horse lover you could totally appreciate (and understand) it all, but a lot of it was lost on me. And.... I have a 9 month old boy, first pages are grueling and the subject with which they relate is hard to digest, when you read the novel you'll understand my point. But it's one of those books which I'd say do read, to see how great she is with words and her description of matters so dark/ugly/unpleasant and a bit crazy. I wanted to like it more after a really positive review from dad (he borrowed it from his library for a month for my summer beach holiday) but just didn't. A pleasant summer read it just is not.
Addendum, July 2016. I have been thinking about this book a lot since the passing of the author, Gillian Mears. Partly for that reason, but also due to my growing interest in the field of AWW (Australian Women Authors). This is also due to the fact that I have been looking at this theme in my studies of Library and Information services. Not that I'm an expert, but I feel this author did not get a terrible lot of recognition (or is that just me)? This is a book that is very special, with excellent writing and a challenging theme. I encourage readers that enjoy Australian themes or just enjoy the AWW experience to give this book a go. I realise it's not a five star read for me but it is really very, very good.
Addendum, July 2016. I have been thinking about this book a lot since the passing of the author, Gillian Mears. Partly for that reason, but also due to my growing interest in the field of AWW (Australian Women Authors). This is also due to the fact that I have been looking at this theme in my studies of Library and Information services. Not that I'm an expert, but I feel this author did not get a terrible lot of recognition (or is that just me)? This is a book that is very special, with excellent writing and a challenging theme. I encourage readers that enjoy Australian themes or just enjoy the AWW experience to give this book a go. I realise it's not a five star read for me but it is really very, very good.
April 7, 2012
The great strength of this novel was the heightened language, the way that words were charged with their own kind of magic, flowing through everything: the body of the horse, the night sky, lightning, the earth's crust, the fences and bridges and farm buildings, the child, the mother... Drawing strongly on a distinctly Indigenous way of understanding the connectedness of all things, the novel is a respectful attempt to reconcile white Australia and Indigenous experiences, it stares frankly at the horror and the exultations of a life lived in relation to the land and other people, subject to the fortunes and failures of the seasons, of love and loss, and of history. I was amazed by the power of this book and if it times it seemed a slower pace, I forgave it for the incredible detail - I truly felt I had lived another life by the end of this novel and was a better human being for it.
July 19, 2012
When I was a little girl, there were three exciting events in the year: Christmas, Easter and the Foster Show – which took place on the third Saturday of February each year. It still does. I went last year for the first time in almost forty years and enjoyed it again. The dog high jump, the decorated cakes, the knitting and the chooks. All great. Foal’s Bread made me remember what status the show had in the lives of country people. Gillian Mears, speaking on the ABC, said that she wanted to write about a “more graceful age – the country shows and royal shows that played a much greater part in the life of Australians.”
It’s funny the word graceful – it’s not the first word you would use to describe the book. It’s grim, and sad. Listening to Mears, I can hear that she can find the humour in it – but it was much harder for me to see it in this light. It’s about a young girl, Noah, to whom lovely and horrible things happen. As a result, she is a complex character, she drinks too much and struggles to show the tender and needy side of herself, even to her children. I returned to the definition of rural gothic that I found when I was reading Bereft; this definition from http://www.virtualsalt.com/gothic.htm. included: -atmosphere of mystery and suspense, -omens, portents, visions, - an ancient prophecy, -high or overwrought emotion, - a woman in distress or threatened by a tyrannical male, - supernatural or inexplicable events. Foal’s Bread is not quite American Gothic – it’s hard to say what the difference is, but it’s not too far away. Not one, not two but three lightning strikes bedevil one character. The emotion – and this might be the factor that diminishes its gothic potential – is so tightly repressed in all of the characters. A missing baby (metaphorically) haunts the novel and Noah. The focus of the novel is intimate – we seldom move further than the farm. The wider world has a bearing on events but it is distant. The novel is set between the two world wars in northern New South Wales. It is remote, dairy farming is hard graft and many men have not returned from the war.
I very much liked this aspect of the novel; Mears created a little slice of history and accentuated some of the issues for people; lack of manpower and husbands, the advent of new technology like tractors and the end of an era in terms of characters such as Roley Nancarrow who worked the show circuit as a horseman. In interview, Mears said: “That kind of jumping - high, high into the air over impossibly dangerous objects - is banned now, or at least regulated to within an inch of its life, like everything else in this modern world. No horse jumps that high anymore and as a consequence the world high-jumping record of 2.47m set by a gleaming horse called Huaso one day in Chile in February 1949 remains unbroken.” An article about Mears in the Sydney Morning Herald stated: “Ever since she was a small girl she loved sitting around listening to old horsemen talking: "I fell in love with those old storytellers, and the way they tell their stories, the vocabulary of how those old men speak ... there's a great femininity in them too, you know, they love their cup of tea and their ginger nut … Honestly, if you could hear their voices, you would know why I have had a love affair with them for a long time. They can be telling a heartbreaking kind of story, up and down, up and down go their voices, and yet somehow they're also splitting you into two with laughter."
This love is obvious in the novel, as is her love of and familiarity with horses. She said that she wanted the novel to be a meditation on the beauty of horses and the gift that a horse can give you. I think the darkness of the story overwhelmed this wish for me. Mears grew up in Grafton riding horses and she says that she now experiences Grafton as if the whole town is littered with the ghost of obstacles that could be jumped. I think her book stems very strongly from her current illness: she is confined to a wheelchair. She spoke in the ABC interview of the “anger that has swept large parts of my life away.” She said that she had to remember people like the man who wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to cope. The cruelty of this confinement and dimishment plays out effectively in the book, along with the lost opportunities for expressing sexuality (she has written in other places of having a “pretty gigantic carnal appetite”) and the tenderness and nourishment that good sex gives to us.
Susan Johnson wrote a long and interesting article about Mears – with this fascinating paragraph as just one of the reasons for reading more: “I last saw Mears standing up on the Paris Metro in the summer of 1992. I was going back to the studio where I was living on an Australia Council fellowship (we are both fiction writers who began our publishing careers around the same time, but Mears is a few years younger than me and from the first her books met with stellar publishing success, two winning regional Commonwealth Writers' Prizes and her first novel, The Mint Lawn, winning the 1990 Australian/Vogel Literary Award). On that long ago night I remember the heat and the particular smell of the Metro and also that I was going home to write but Mears was going to an orgy.” http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/wr... She’s a complex woman – in another interview, she says: "Masochism really intrigues me. The notion of affliction and why women become so abject and passive, especially in country towns. In a way, my novels are explorations of that." http://users.tpg.com.au/waldrenm/mear...
One of the things I would like to write more about, but feel constrained because of plot spoilers – is the way in which Mears treats the topic of paedophilia. I think her point of view is that it’s a complex topic – but her normalisation of the behaviour of one character is vaguely troubling.
The Sydney Morning Herald summed up Foals’ Bread in this way: “There's something almost Lawrentian at times in its heightened feeling and its sense of struggle. It is an account of the hard journey towards the light and of the dark forces that threaten to interrupt and overwhelm. And how the dark and light can be aspects of the same power: the electricity that Roley says draws him to Noah is also his undoing. http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/b... It’s slightly more Ruth Park than Lawrence for me (not tortured intellectual enough). What she captures well is the lack of power that people, particularly women, have when they are poor. Mears said she was inspired by learning the word ‘resipiscence’ which she defined as “coming to one’s senses following a brutal encounter”. This is a tough old book but a good read. I’m reconnected with the sunshine and fairyfloss and joy of the Foster Show but also in the dark place of the Depression, violence and abuse. A complex space.
It’s funny the word graceful – it’s not the first word you would use to describe the book. It’s grim, and sad. Listening to Mears, I can hear that she can find the humour in it – but it was much harder for me to see it in this light. It’s about a young girl, Noah, to whom lovely and horrible things happen. As a result, she is a complex character, she drinks too much and struggles to show the tender and needy side of herself, even to her children. I returned to the definition of rural gothic that I found when I was reading Bereft; this definition from http://www.virtualsalt.com/gothic.htm. included: -atmosphere of mystery and suspense, -omens, portents, visions, - an ancient prophecy, -high or overwrought emotion, - a woman in distress or threatened by a tyrannical male, - supernatural or inexplicable events. Foal’s Bread is not quite American Gothic – it’s hard to say what the difference is, but it’s not too far away. Not one, not two but three lightning strikes bedevil one character. The emotion – and this might be the factor that diminishes its gothic potential – is so tightly repressed in all of the characters. A missing baby (metaphorically) haunts the novel and Noah. The focus of the novel is intimate – we seldom move further than the farm. The wider world has a bearing on events but it is distant. The novel is set between the two world wars in northern New South Wales. It is remote, dairy farming is hard graft and many men have not returned from the war.
I very much liked this aspect of the novel; Mears created a little slice of history and accentuated some of the issues for people; lack of manpower and husbands, the advent of new technology like tractors and the end of an era in terms of characters such as Roley Nancarrow who worked the show circuit as a horseman. In interview, Mears said: “That kind of jumping - high, high into the air over impossibly dangerous objects - is banned now, or at least regulated to within an inch of its life, like everything else in this modern world. No horse jumps that high anymore and as a consequence the world high-jumping record of 2.47m set by a gleaming horse called Huaso one day in Chile in February 1949 remains unbroken.” An article about Mears in the Sydney Morning Herald stated: “Ever since she was a small girl she loved sitting around listening to old horsemen talking: "I fell in love with those old storytellers, and the way they tell their stories, the vocabulary of how those old men speak ... there's a great femininity in them too, you know, they love their cup of tea and their ginger nut … Honestly, if you could hear their voices, you would know why I have had a love affair with them for a long time. They can be telling a heartbreaking kind of story, up and down, up and down go their voices, and yet somehow they're also splitting you into two with laughter."
This love is obvious in the novel, as is her love of and familiarity with horses. She said that she wanted the novel to be a meditation on the beauty of horses and the gift that a horse can give you. I think the darkness of the story overwhelmed this wish for me. Mears grew up in Grafton riding horses and she says that she now experiences Grafton as if the whole town is littered with the ghost of obstacles that could be jumped. I think her book stems very strongly from her current illness: she is confined to a wheelchair. She spoke in the ABC interview of the “anger that has swept large parts of my life away.” She said that she had to remember people like the man who wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to cope. The cruelty of this confinement and dimishment plays out effectively in the book, along with the lost opportunities for expressing sexuality (she has written in other places of having a “pretty gigantic carnal appetite”) and the tenderness and nourishment that good sex gives to us.
Susan Johnson wrote a long and interesting article about Mears – with this fascinating paragraph as just one of the reasons for reading more: “I last saw Mears standing up on the Paris Metro in the summer of 1992. I was going back to the studio where I was living on an Australia Council fellowship (we are both fiction writers who began our publishing careers around the same time, but Mears is a few years younger than me and from the first her books met with stellar publishing success, two winning regional Commonwealth Writers' Prizes and her first novel, The Mint Lawn, winning the 1990 Australian/Vogel Literary Award). On that long ago night I remember the heat and the particular smell of the Metro and also that I was going home to write but Mears was going to an orgy.” http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/wr... She’s a complex woman – in another interview, she says: "Masochism really intrigues me. The notion of affliction and why women become so abject and passive, especially in country towns. In a way, my novels are explorations of that." http://users.tpg.com.au/waldrenm/mear...
One of the things I would like to write more about, but feel constrained because of plot spoilers – is the way in which Mears treats the topic of paedophilia. I think her point of view is that it’s a complex topic – but her normalisation of the behaviour of one character is vaguely troubling.
The Sydney Morning Herald summed up Foals’ Bread in this way: “There's something almost Lawrentian at times in its heightened feeling and its sense of struggle. It is an account of the hard journey towards the light and of the dark forces that threaten to interrupt and overwhelm. And how the dark and light can be aspects of the same power: the electricity that Roley says draws him to Noah is also his undoing. http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/b... It’s slightly more Ruth Park than Lawrence for me (not tortured intellectual enough). What she captures well is the lack of power that people, particularly women, have when they are poor. Mears said she was inspired by learning the word ‘resipiscence’ which she defined as “coming to one’s senses following a brutal encounter”. This is a tough old book but a good read. I’m reconnected with the sunshine and fairyfloss and joy of the Foster Show but also in the dark place of the Depression, violence and abuse. A complex space.
December 6, 2012
I knew this was a Literary book when I bought it. I was at the Premier’s literary awards and it won. It had Helen Garner on the cover saying it was “glorious” and the person who took the award on her behalf talking about her in hushed tones that along with the comments from the author at the end (which I read first) and the article in the paper, I knew this was a long time coming, a special book from a special person who among other things is well qualified to write about a chronic insidious illness. It was also about horses and I thought if noghting else this would speak to me, as I was brought up with them and though an eventer not show jumper, I still get a tear in my eye when I watch International Velvet.
So I was surprised at how much I struggled (but keep reading, the struggle was worth it). Because I read a lot of popular easily digested fiction, often the first chapter of Literary book is hard going. All those meaningful sentences that have been agonised over. But this struggle took me until half way through the book, not because of the obvious effort of literary genius (it's very nicely written and not painfully Literary), but because of the Australian vernacular that she “effortlessly creates” and is lauded for but which just makes me cringe. I’m obviously a cultural snob but I have very little in common with people that sprinkle “fair dinkum” in their prose and I don’t like Kerry Greenwood’s Phyrne Fisher books for the same reason. It’s not just Aussie slang I don’t like, I disliked Grapes of Wrath as well.
Then there were the horses. This is about pre and postwar Jumping circuit and I struggled to believe it or make sense of it in the light of my own much more recent experience, including following serious eventers around. They were more like Jilly Cooper’s riders than this salt of the earth working class rural family.
But then about half way through what is a dense book, the transformation happened. I had been pulled in by Meares’s characters and they had woven their magic about me. There was no way I wasn’t going to finish. Her true genius I think is not in the sentences individually but how each reflection however brief, each thought of each character, are woven together to create a patchwork of complexity that have these characters jumping off the page (and over the jumps). Nothing is heavy handed, but with each look and regret you feel their pain and you long to fix it. But you also know their strengths and soar with them when they overcome and even when they give in, because it somehow seems right.
It is a story of pain, love and tragedy, of abuse and recovery, of damnation and redemption. I saw some of the ending coming but not all, and even then it didn’t matter. I wanted to ride the last jump and have the last final triumph and failure. A beautiful book and one that will be remembered in images but even more in the memory of feelings, and one that is certainly worth the struggle.
May 10, 2013
Gillian Mears’ searing novel of Australia, Foal’s Bread, was sixteen years in the making. It was published in late 2011 with the publishers Allen & Unwin, and then proceeded to win the 2012 Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction and The Australian Literary Society’s 2012 Gold Medal while also winning or being shortlisted for eleven other Australian prizes. While apparently still not available in bookstores in the U.S., it is available new or used from mostly overseas sellers on Alibris, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble. It is worth seeking out. It is high on my list of “Best of” fiction reads for 2013.
This unforgettable saga of a horse woman and her family living in rural New South Wales begins in 1926 with motherless Noey on a pig drive with her pa, Cecil. Her father is proud of her: “wasn’t no horse too tricky that my daughter couldn’t git over a…ladies’ high jump.” So the two of them sign up for the Port Lake Show, one of many such country shows all around Australia in the late summer and fall. Noey is fourteen, and ”built small…she was like a pony come out of the scrub. The hair on it just like a sun-bleached flaxen mane.” At that show Noah meets her future husband, Roley, a consistent winner on the showjumping circuit.
This hard-hitting and psychologically complex fiction centers around a fully realized and unrepentantly sexual woman. She is both grasping and generous. She feels more than she expresses and bears as much as she is able. She is tender and terrible in jumping the hurdles in her life, bringing us the sense of a whole person. She is unable to keep her husband and all three children safe from harm, and this knowledge weighs on her.
There are several daring, disturbing, and thought-provoking themes running through this novel, one of which is sexual love for a much older partner. Mears has us wrestle with our feelings about this to some effect. We are unsure what to make of her characterization of the love between Noey and Uncle Nip, and this adds to the complicated feelings we experience while we read. It is quite thrilling to be once again unsure of oneself when presented with the power of her storytelling.
The story itself is rounded and full, holding all the complicated emotions, joys, and disappointments of real life. The language is strong and farmstyle frank. We watch two generations on one family farm over a period of some eighty years. The baby George, born “special” and a little simple, makes his family’s lives more joyous than they might otherwise have been because he reflects their love back two-fold. Special, indeed. Roley, Noah’s showjumping husband, struggles with despair as a wasting disease hijacks his limbs. Noey charts his decay, and denied the comfort of her husband’s body, passes through every stage of grief. Suppression of her natural tenderness causes her personality to twist.
The passage of time is marked through the growth and seasonal change in a jacaranda tree, for under its spreading branches and purple blossoms major events are marked. The tree lives on through drought and flood, and just becomes more beautiful as it ages. I still wonder why Mears ended the book the way she did, for I didn’t think her ending was as inevitable as she made it feel, but I concede it does show once again the confusion and emotional distress tearing apart an older Noey.
After finishing this book, you are likely to be curious about the author, rural New South Wales, and the early days of showjumping when obstacles were stacked impossibly high and the country shows were exhilarating and extraordinary. Mears explains her research and her writing in this audio interview with the ABC Book Show host, Anita Barraud. Mears herself knows something about an unexplainable muscle-wasting disease, for she has struggled herself with Multiple Schlerosis for some years. The mystery and arbitrariness of that disease forces a furious frustration on all that come in contact with it.
And what is a foal’s bread? It is not exactly clear, but it appears to be a lump of tissue found within a foal’s placental birthing sac. Dark, hard, and heavy at the birth, it can be dried out, passing through stages until it is light colored and lightweight. It is a rare enough find to be considered a lucky event.
This unforgettable saga of a horse woman and her family living in rural New South Wales begins in 1926 with motherless Noey on a pig drive with her pa, Cecil. Her father is proud of her: “wasn’t no horse too tricky that my daughter couldn’t git over a…ladies’ high jump.” So the two of them sign up for the Port Lake Show, one of many such country shows all around Australia in the late summer and fall. Noey is fourteen, and ”built small…she was like a pony come out of the scrub. The hair on it just like a sun-bleached flaxen mane.” At that show Noah meets her future husband, Roley, a consistent winner on the showjumping circuit.
This hard-hitting and psychologically complex fiction centers around a fully realized and unrepentantly sexual woman. She is both grasping and generous. She feels more than she expresses and bears as much as she is able. She is tender and terrible in jumping the hurdles in her life, bringing us the sense of a whole person. She is unable to keep her husband and all three children safe from harm, and this knowledge weighs on her.
There are several daring, disturbing, and thought-provoking themes running through this novel, one of which is sexual love for a much older partner. Mears has us wrestle with our feelings about this to some effect. We are unsure what to make of her characterization of the love between Noey and Uncle Nip, and this adds to the complicated feelings we experience while we read. It is quite thrilling to be once again unsure of oneself when presented with the power of her storytelling.
The story itself is rounded and full, holding all the complicated emotions, joys, and disappointments of real life. The language is strong and farmstyle frank. We watch two generations on one family farm over a period of some eighty years. The baby George, born “special” and a little simple, makes his family’s lives more joyous than they might otherwise have been because he reflects their love back two-fold. Special, indeed. Roley, Noah’s showjumping husband, struggles with despair as a wasting disease hijacks his limbs. Noey charts his decay, and denied the comfort of her husband’s body, passes through every stage of grief. Suppression of her natural tenderness causes her personality to twist.
The passage of time is marked through the growth and seasonal change in a jacaranda tree, for under its spreading branches and purple blossoms major events are marked. The tree lives on through drought and flood, and just becomes more beautiful as it ages. I still wonder why Mears ended the book the way she did, for I didn’t think her ending was as inevitable as she made it feel, but I concede it does show once again the confusion and emotional distress tearing apart an older Noey.
After finishing this book, you are likely to be curious about the author, rural New South Wales, and the early days of showjumping when obstacles were stacked impossibly high and the country shows were exhilarating and extraordinary. Mears explains her research and her writing in this audio interview with the ABC Book Show host, Anita Barraud. Mears herself knows something about an unexplainable muscle-wasting disease, for she has struggled herself with Multiple Schlerosis for some years. The mystery and arbitrariness of that disease forces a furious frustration on all that come in contact with it.
And what is a foal’s bread? It is not exactly clear, but it appears to be a lump of tissue found within a foal’s placental birthing sac. Dark, hard, and heavy at the birth, it can be dried out, passing through stages until it is light colored and lightweight. It is a rare enough find to be considered a lucky event.
Read
December 28, 2014I sat here & stared at the star ratings on goodreads for a while before I finally chose '5'. Because the phrase 'it was amazing' seemed to describe this book best. It is amazing.
I can't say I like it, though.
I spent around a hundred pages astonished at Mears' mastery, her strange, colloquial, lyrical language, the power of her character portraits. Then I put the book down for a long while & found no temptation to pick it up again. It's a slow, sad book.
But on page 167 - for no apparent reason that I can pinpoint - I stopped caring. I didn't care about finishing the book & I didn't care about any of its characters.
And so I began to read faster & faster, breaking into at least an awkward trot if not a graceful canter. At times I stumbled, because the language had stopped convincing me or because another slip in the point of view had jarred me out of the story. I stuck with it even though I knew the next 167 pages would be as miserable as the first, and despite sensing that this was not a 'learning' book, it was not about some moral teaching. It is a harsh book about a harsh place & how harsh a harsh life can make someone. At least, that's my interpretation.
I stuck with it because I was fascinated by the authorial techniques. Even when I didn't enjoy them (the slippery point of view is one of them).
But ultimately the reason I didn't like this book is very simple. It's because of the relentless cruelty. I expected more ... beauty, more love. I expected more *horses*, I'll be honest, & for the horses to have personalities & warmth & life. I expected to smell horse hair and feel the flick of a mane in my face. I felt, instead, rather trampled. The horses are there almost completely as objects of cruelty, the messy business end of a brutal family where the good characters (the baker, the mute brother) are sidelined for the sake of the nasty ones. As if in all the world there is only space for meanness and abuse.
It reminded me of two things: one, THE PAINTED BIRD, a book I loathe more than any other book I've ever loathed (and boy, have I loathed some books) for its blunt, sadistic grotesquerie. And two, THE SUMMER OF THE SEVENTEENTH DOLL, a stageplay about the struggles of inarticulate people to articulate their greatest emotions. And yes, I didn't like that stageplay either. (I don't know why. Perhaps because I find it disingenuous of authors to write on behalf of 'the inarticulate'. But then, I don't know why THAT is. It's not like either work is particularly patronising. In fact, I should probably be glad when someone writes something that isn't middle-class & articulate. Hmmm. I digress.)
It's an extremely smart book. It's a book about grief, I guess, but it's stuck at the 'anger' stage.
It's a book that's full of rage.
I can't say I like it, though.
I spent around a hundred pages astonished at Mears' mastery, her strange, colloquial, lyrical language, the power of her character portraits. Then I put the book down for a long while & found no temptation to pick it up again. It's a slow, sad book.
But on page 167 - for no apparent reason that I can pinpoint - I stopped caring. I didn't care about finishing the book & I didn't care about any of its characters.
And so I began to read faster & faster, breaking into at least an awkward trot if not a graceful canter. At times I stumbled, because the language had stopped convincing me or because another slip in the point of view had jarred me out of the story. I stuck with it even though I knew the next 167 pages would be as miserable as the first, and despite sensing that this was not a 'learning' book, it was not about some moral teaching. It is a harsh book about a harsh place & how harsh a harsh life can make someone. At least, that's my interpretation.
I stuck with it because I was fascinated by the authorial techniques. Even when I didn't enjoy them (the slippery point of view is one of them).
But ultimately the reason I didn't like this book is very simple. It's because of the relentless cruelty. I expected more ... beauty, more love. I expected more *horses*, I'll be honest, & for the horses to have personalities & warmth & life. I expected to smell horse hair and feel the flick of a mane in my face. I felt, instead, rather trampled. The horses are there almost completely as objects of cruelty, the messy business end of a brutal family where the good characters (the baker, the mute brother) are sidelined for the sake of the nasty ones. As if in all the world there is only space for meanness and abuse.
It reminded me of two things: one, THE PAINTED BIRD, a book I loathe more than any other book I've ever loathed (and boy, have I loathed some books) for its blunt, sadistic grotesquerie. And two, THE SUMMER OF THE SEVENTEENTH DOLL, a stageplay about the struggles of inarticulate people to articulate their greatest emotions. And yes, I didn't like that stageplay either. (I don't know why. Perhaps because I find it disingenuous of authors to write on behalf of 'the inarticulate'. But then, I don't know why THAT is. It's not like either work is particularly patronising. In fact, I should probably be glad when someone writes something that isn't middle-class & articulate. Hmmm. I digress.)
It's an extremely smart book. It's a book about grief, I guess, but it's stuck at the 'anger' stage.
It's a book that's full of rage.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 26, 2014
This is a remarkable story of rural Australia between the wars – times were tough and the people of this landscape, tougher. Mears writes this bitter sweet love story with panache and colour, tears and heartache, joy and disappointment. As readers we mount the horses with Noh, Rol and Lainey and feel the air crackle with electricity as we fly over the impossibly high jumps We sample Aunty Ral’s cakes and lollies and fall in love with baby George. We break our hearts and cry silent tears for this family caught up in sins of the past and present. A beautiful, moving yet tragic story. A story of true Australian grit.
January 20, 2013
Foal's Bread is the story of an Australian family living in Northern New South Wales and spans the inter-war and WW2 years. The Nancarrow family are dairy people and show jumping runs in the blood. This show jumping is the tough show jumping of the Australian country shows not the regal showjumping of upper class toffs. Life too is tough and this is a book of courage and resilience.
The paths of Noah Childs and Roley Nancarrow intercept at the Port Lake Show where they are both entered in the jumping competitions.Here begins their love story. The two settle on the Nancarrow family dairy with Roley's parents, sisters & Uncle Owen. A daughter, Lainey, and a downs syndrome son, George complete the family. As the blurb on the inside cover states, this family's story is one of "impossible beauty and sadness, a chronicle of dreams 'turned inside out', and miracles that never last, framed against a world both heartbreakingly tender and unspeakably hard."
This story starts and ends brutally with Noah who is one of the best chracters I've encountered in a book. She might be described as tough, resilient, awkward, jealous, tender, loyal, and harsh. She is at times negligent, alcoholic and a murderer yet the power of this novel is that the reader never loses empathy for her.
Roley's riding is interrupted when he is struck by lightening while out riding in a storm. The effects of which gradually cripple him, physically and emotionally till the point that he becomes an invalid and wastes till his young death. As Roley's legs go to waste so does his marriage to Noah.
The family dynamics on the dairy are another central part of the plot. We see a power struggle between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law tussle for attention, affection and authority. The reader will also meet the spinster Aunt who cooks, cares, sews, mediates and dreams for something of her own. We see a sister's fierce love for a downs syndrome brother but also her shame. We see a mother who becomes viciously jealous of her own daughter and her ability to withhold affection and isolate her child is heart wrenching. On the flip side, her ability to defend and protect that same daughter provides the heart breaking climax of the story.
I love reading books in which I feel like I have met the characters and this is certainly the case with Foal's Bread. Having grown up in country Queensland, I found these characters very authentic and their lives, desires, heartache and actions all resonated deeply. A great read.
The paths of Noah Childs and Roley Nancarrow intercept at the Port Lake Show where they are both entered in the jumping competitions.Here begins their love story. The two settle on the Nancarrow family dairy with Roley's parents, sisters & Uncle Owen. A daughter, Lainey, and a downs syndrome son, George complete the family. As the blurb on the inside cover states, this family's story is one of "impossible beauty and sadness, a chronicle of dreams 'turned inside out', and miracles that never last, framed against a world both heartbreakingly tender and unspeakably hard."
This story starts and ends brutally with Noah who is one of the best chracters I've encountered in a book. She might be described as tough, resilient, awkward, jealous, tender, loyal, and harsh. She is at times negligent, alcoholic and a murderer yet the power of this novel is that the reader never loses empathy for her.
Roley's riding is interrupted when he is struck by lightening while out riding in a storm. The effects of which gradually cripple him, physically and emotionally till the point that he becomes an invalid and wastes till his young death. As Roley's legs go to waste so does his marriage to Noah.
The family dynamics on the dairy are another central part of the plot. We see a power struggle between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law tussle for attention, affection and authority. The reader will also meet the spinster Aunt who cooks, cares, sews, mediates and dreams for something of her own. We see a sister's fierce love for a downs syndrome brother but also her shame. We see a mother who becomes viciously jealous of her own daughter and her ability to withhold affection and isolate her child is heart wrenching. On the flip side, her ability to defend and protect that same daughter provides the heart breaking climax of the story.
I love reading books in which I feel like I have met the characters and this is certainly the case with Foal's Bread. Having grown up in country Queensland, I found these characters very authentic and their lives, desires, heartache and actions all resonated deeply. A great read.
November 26, 2012
Though wonderfully evocative and lyrical, Foal's Bread is a bleak, raw story of loss, hardship and love. In the moonlight, at the base of One Tree Hill, a fourteen year old girl watches impassively as her fate drifts down river in a butter box. Spanning several decades, from the mid 1920's to the 1950's, set in the hard country of New South Wales, this is a compelling novel that traces the life of Noah Child.
Foal's Bread is a novel that is appreciated rather than enjoyed, for the unrelenting tragedy that dogs Noah and the Nancarrows is almost unrelieved. Mears cultivates an oppressive atmosphere where joy is short lived and always edged in achingly raw heartbreak. At times I found it difficult to go on yet I also found I could not let go, challenged by the intriguing characters and fascinated by a time and place long gone.
The intimate relationships between the members of the Nancarrow family are compelling. The way in which they turn sour, love twisted by ambition, jealousy and tragedy, lasting happiness elusive. Yet I couldn't help but admire their resilience and the way in which they kept moving forward despite broken minds, bodies and dreams.
Mears also explores the burdens of family legacies and the narrow fate of those tied to the land and it's vagaries. The harsh realities of farming in the bush and the drudgery of day to day existence is detailed without sentiment or the rosy glow of nostalgia. While tightly focused on the Nancarrow family, and One Tree Hill Farm, the story encompasses the events of society, touching on the world wars and their impact on the home front.
It's easy to see why the literati were so taken by Foal's Bread which was nominated for several of Australia's literary awards this year and won quite a few. Combining powerful storytelling with a strong, original narrative firmly grounded in Australia's unique landscape, Foal's Bread is a remarkable novel.
December 20, 2012
See my full review here - http://booksaremyfavouriteandbest.wor...
It’s taken me quite a few days to write this review. It wasn’t a matter of deciding whether or not I liked Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears. In many ways, there’s not much to ‘like’ – it’s bleak, tough, crushing. But it’s also brilliant. In fact, the first chapter of this stunning book will never leave me. It’s the start of a hundred little heart-breaks for the main character, Noah Childs, and as the reader I shared every last one with her.
Foal’s Bread tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family prior to the Second World War. The backdrop is the unforgiving farming country of rural New South Wales, a parade of country agricultural shows and the high-jumping horse circuit.
It’s not hard to see why this book has attracted so much attention (and why it won the Prime Ministers Literary Awards 2012 prize for fiction). There are dozens of glowing reviews – what can I add? Certainly no new insights but I can share what I loved most about Foal’s Bread.
First and foremost, that first chapter. It is devastating beyond belief. We meet Noah, a girl of fourteen, mustering pigs with her dad. They stop at One Tree Hill for the night where Noah first meets the Nancarrow family. Noah’s father heads for the pub, leaving Noah to look after the pigs. She does. But she also has a pain in her gut and squats in the cool water of a nearby creek where she gives birth to a baby. Her uncle’s baby.
“Though she had no memory of her own mother, who’d died soon after Noah came into the world, or of any kiss with the exception of Uncle Nipper’s after he’d tanked up on rum, she found herself crouching down. Keeping it in the box, she held the morsel of a baby up to her face. Allowing her mouth, her eyes, to fill with a feeling hitherto only bestowed on the eyelids of foals, she gave him a soft and squeaky kiss… ‘Go on then.’ She waded out into the deeper water. Found the current. ‘Be good! Don’t fall out!’ In the moonlight the butter box went like a crazy toy, pulled quickly into the faster water of the Flaggy by the weight of its miniature boatman. But even as the boat and the baby disappeared around the creek’s bend, his forehead holding all the softness of her farewell, Noah’s face changed shape forever.”
Having abandoned her baby, I wasn’t going to abandon Noah. I grasped onto minor events along the way that gave Noah hope – a small windfall, the birth of a foal. I kept reading, all the while thinking about that baby floating down the creek in a butter box – hoping that something, anything, could repair this first, monumental heartbreak. Which of course nothing will. There are parts of the story where Noah is not at all likeable – in some of these bits Mears brings back a memory of the floating butter box (or as Noah refers to the baby, ‘her Little Mister’). But it’s hardly needed because you’re sharing Noah’s grief with every single word of this grim story.
And every single word of Foal’s Bread is beautifully crafted. I’m sure that for many readers, much of what they will enjoy or intensely dislike about this book is Mears’ use of the Australian vernacular. In less skilled hands, the language could sound crass or forced but Mears is poetic, her words rich (but not sentimental), painting a vivid and delicate portrait of a landscape that is in fact rough and unforgiving.
“”‘Now then,’ he said, turning around to hooroo Lainey and George, who’d stayed on the platform. Two jacaranda trees at the station were also in flower. All that lilac blossom gave Lainey the magical feeling that by the time her father did come home, he’d be as right as rain. As if miracles lay in the colour purple. What about calling a horse Jacaranda Girl? Wouldn’t that be a good one?”
Lastly, I liked what Mears did with the ending of the story. Without giving anything away, the ending was an interesting change of pace and I suspect was somewhat of a risk for the author.
It’s taken me quite a few days to write this review. It wasn’t a matter of deciding whether or not I liked Foal’s Bread by Gillian Mears. In many ways, there’s not much to ‘like’ – it’s bleak, tough, crushing. But it’s also brilliant. In fact, the first chapter of this stunning book will never leave me. It’s the start of a hundred little heart-breaks for the main character, Noah Childs, and as the reader I shared every last one with her.
Foal’s Bread tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family prior to the Second World War. The backdrop is the unforgiving farming country of rural New South Wales, a parade of country agricultural shows and the high-jumping horse circuit.
It’s not hard to see why this book has attracted so much attention (and why it won the Prime Ministers Literary Awards 2012 prize for fiction). There are dozens of glowing reviews – what can I add? Certainly no new insights but I can share what I loved most about Foal’s Bread.
First and foremost, that first chapter. It is devastating beyond belief. We meet Noah, a girl of fourteen, mustering pigs with her dad. They stop at One Tree Hill for the night where Noah first meets the Nancarrow family. Noah’s father heads for the pub, leaving Noah to look after the pigs. She does. But she also has a pain in her gut and squats in the cool water of a nearby creek where she gives birth to a baby. Her uncle’s baby.
“Though she had no memory of her own mother, who’d died soon after Noah came into the world, or of any kiss with the exception of Uncle Nipper’s after he’d tanked up on rum, she found herself crouching down. Keeping it in the box, she held the morsel of a baby up to her face. Allowing her mouth, her eyes, to fill with a feeling hitherto only bestowed on the eyelids of foals, she gave him a soft and squeaky kiss… ‘Go on then.’ She waded out into the deeper water. Found the current. ‘Be good! Don’t fall out!’ In the moonlight the butter box went like a crazy toy, pulled quickly into the faster water of the Flaggy by the weight of its miniature boatman. But even as the boat and the baby disappeared around the creek’s bend, his forehead holding all the softness of her farewell, Noah’s face changed shape forever.”
Having abandoned her baby, I wasn’t going to abandon Noah. I grasped onto minor events along the way that gave Noah hope – a small windfall, the birth of a foal. I kept reading, all the while thinking about that baby floating down the creek in a butter box – hoping that something, anything, could repair this first, monumental heartbreak. Which of course nothing will. There are parts of the story where Noah is not at all likeable – in some of these bits Mears brings back a memory of the floating butter box (or as Noah refers to the baby, ‘her Little Mister’). But it’s hardly needed because you’re sharing Noah’s grief with every single word of this grim story.
And every single word of Foal’s Bread is beautifully crafted. I’m sure that for many readers, much of what they will enjoy or intensely dislike about this book is Mears’ use of the Australian vernacular. In less skilled hands, the language could sound crass or forced but Mears is poetic, her words rich (but not sentimental), painting a vivid and delicate portrait of a landscape that is in fact rough and unforgiving.
“”‘Now then,’ he said, turning around to hooroo Lainey and George, who’d stayed on the platform. Two jacaranda trees at the station were also in flower. All that lilac blossom gave Lainey the magical feeling that by the time her father did come home, he’d be as right as rain. As if miracles lay in the colour purple. What about calling a horse Jacaranda Girl? Wouldn’t that be a good one?”
Lastly, I liked what Mears did with the ending of the story. Without giving anything away, the ending was an interesting change of pace and I suspect was somewhat of a risk for the author.
May 4, 2017
I put off reading this for a long time, because while it was always described as 'good' it was also described as 'grim', 'heartbreaking' or 'devastating'. My plan was actually to read the first part, and see how I felt. The problem of course is that Mears hits you right out the gate, with an evocative scene so infused with gentle horror that the book has you in its clutches and won't let go, while you struggle to recover. We watch as a child, abused and seeing no choices, carries out acts she has no idea of the impact of. And in this way, Mears sets up an extraordinary novel about rural Australian life between the wars, abuse and trauma, and the strange relationship between show jumpers and their horses.
The unfolding of the opening scene, where the reader is a modern adult, and the protagonist a child with no framework to view her own abuse, sets a strange tone for the interaction of reader and novel. I was always aware of being an audience for this story, of knowing things its characters didn't, but instead of taking me out of the story, that sense someone drew me in as if I had to role to play as witness. Mears excels at conjuring images, and creating vivid scenes engages the reader, but her journey through the book is artfully constructed.
Despite the tragedy that underpins the book, it genuinely didn't feel grim to me. It is a story told about hard lives, in a hard time. Our protagonists are relatively untouched by war, but the background to their tragedies are the shattered husbands and sons and fathers from one war, and then the next. There are tragedies in this story, but there is joy as well. Mears brings to life the pleasure of a baby's laughter, and the perfection of families in complete sync with each other, just as she invokes the stiff and cold world of spouses who can't bring themselves to touch. The book feels like an ode to survival, to the value of trying, to the things in the human (and horse!) spirit that abuse, violence and disappointment can't obliterate. The book is not, it is true, hopeful. But neither is it hopeless: this is life, it seems to say, and what a full-on experience that can be.
Mears tackles racism, like trauma, in a persistent but never obvious way. It has been years since I heard the term "touch of the tar", but it took me straight back to my grandmother's sewing room Aboriginal parents or grandparents in a 'white' family was a subject of malicious gossip and humiliation, but not the exclusion and open abuse meted out to 'darkies'. This system, in which a `white' girl can meet her black brother only at night, is just observed not commented upon, but none the less devastating for that.
By far the most confronting impact of this observation technique is seeing sexual abuse through the eye of the victim, and all the confusion, abandonment, sexuality and trauma that she simply cannot lay to rest. For this alone, the book deserves awards.
I must confess, however, to not actually liking horses very much. I suspect this did make the book a bit easier to take. Because while my empathy circuits were on full exhaustion for the human experience, I could observe rather more dispassionately - if no less critically - the abuse and violence meted out to the horses. Mears captures very well this strange rural relationship with animals, where deep affection and reverence can be combined with a ruthlessness, and almost obsessive need to dominate and impose perfect will on domesticated animals.
And aside from all its more weighty jobs, the book excels at simply showing off a world of local and district shows, where baking and jumping are all, and communities exorcise rivalry's while building a kind of solidarity. The show scenes are breathtaking, but so is the quiet determination to perfect the gingernut.
A memorable, if not easy, read, and easily going to be with me for a long time.
The unfolding of the opening scene, where the reader is a modern adult, and the protagonist a child with no framework to view her own abuse, sets a strange tone for the interaction of reader and novel. I was always aware of being an audience for this story, of knowing things its characters didn't, but instead of taking me out of the story, that sense someone drew me in as if I had to role to play as witness. Mears excels at conjuring images, and creating vivid scenes engages the reader, but her journey through the book is artfully constructed.
Despite the tragedy that underpins the book, it genuinely didn't feel grim to me. It is a story told about hard lives, in a hard time. Our protagonists are relatively untouched by war, but the background to their tragedies are the shattered husbands and sons and fathers from one war, and then the next. There are tragedies in this story, but there is joy as well. Mears brings to life the pleasure of a baby's laughter, and the perfection of families in complete sync with each other, just as she invokes the stiff and cold world of spouses who can't bring themselves to touch. The book feels like an ode to survival, to the value of trying, to the things in the human (and horse!) spirit that abuse, violence and disappointment can't obliterate. The book is not, it is true, hopeful. But neither is it hopeless: this is life, it seems to say, and what a full-on experience that can be.
Mears tackles racism, like trauma, in a persistent but never obvious way. It has been years since I heard the term "touch of the tar", but it took me straight back to my grandmother's sewing room Aboriginal parents or grandparents in a 'white' family was a subject of malicious gossip and humiliation, but not the exclusion and open abuse meted out to 'darkies'. This system, in which a `white' girl can meet her black brother only at night, is just observed not commented upon, but none the less devastating for that.
By far the most confronting impact of this observation technique is seeing sexual abuse through the eye of the victim, and all the confusion, abandonment, sexuality and trauma that she simply cannot lay to rest. For this alone, the book deserves awards.
I must confess, however, to not actually liking horses very much. I suspect this did make the book a bit easier to take. Because while my empathy circuits were on full exhaustion for the human experience, I could observe rather more dispassionately - if no less critically - the abuse and violence meted out to the horses. Mears captures very well this strange rural relationship with animals, where deep affection and reverence can be combined with a ruthlessness, and almost obsessive need to dominate and impose perfect will on domesticated animals.
And aside from all its more weighty jobs, the book excels at simply showing off a world of local and district shows, where baking and jumping are all, and communities exorcise rivalry's while building a kind of solidarity. The show scenes are breathtaking, but so is the quiet determination to perfect the gingernut.
A memorable, if not easy, read, and easily going to be with me for a long time.
November 22, 2011
‘To look into the eye of a horse is to see a reflection of yourself that you might’ve forgotten.’
On an autumn afternoon in 1926 Cecil Childs and his 14 year old daughter Noah set up camp beside the river on a property called ‘One Tree’. They are drovers – driving pigs, destined to become bacon in Sydney. Cecil Childs hurries off to town, anxious to drink with his mates. Noah, who wasn’t really aware that she was pregnant, gives birth to a premature baby in the company of the pigs. The father of this baby, Noah’s Uncle Nipper, is dead.
A few days later, Rowley Nancarrow, an Australian champion showjumper and the only son of the farmers of ‘One Tree’ watches a slight girl on a big bay gelding taking the jumps at the local show. Roley, as he is universally known, watches her and admires her courage. Roley goes looking for Noah, and gives her a strange small object - like a piece of shrivelled bread, for luck. This object, called foal’s bread, is sometimes present when a foal is born and is often regarded as bringing luck.
And so begins the story of Noah and Roley’s life together during the cruellest decades in the 20th century. The small country district of New South Wales in which they live has elements, still, of pioneering life. Annual shows with serious equestrian events are the highlight of the year, and Roley and Noah dream of success. Living with Roley’s family at ‘One Tree’ has its challenges: Roley’s mother Minna had high hopes for her son, and her dreams did not include a girl with obvious ‘dark’ blood possessed of drunken aunties and a mindless father.
‘The luckiness and unluckiness of any life.’
Unfortunately, life becomes complicated for Roley and Noah. Any luck that Roley may have had seems to leave him, and Noah struggles with some demons of her own. The novel is written in a vernacular that captures the lives and times of the characters. Sometimes, this seems contrived and doesn’t work – but not in this novel. I’ve heard echoes of this same vernacular in the third quarter of last century, but not since.
This novel traverses some difficult issues: Noah’s sexual abuse by her Uncle Nipper (whom she mostly loves, for he showed her kindness) reverberates throughout her life; Roley’s illness takes away his (and their) dreams. Lainey, we learn, has found a place in the world. Ms Mears manages, in fewer than 360 pages, to observe the handicaps of gender and health and the impacts of love, luck and race in a small geographic space near an edge of Australian society during the first half of the 20th century.
The novel ends with a 21st century Coda. Roley and Noah are long dead, and their daughter Lainey (herself now elderly) returns briefly to the district. Accompanying Lainey, and mindful of the time that has elapsed, distance enables us to experience a different dimension to Roley and Noah’s story.
I found this novel intensely moving: the writing is superb and the characters are brilliantly realised.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
On an autumn afternoon in 1926 Cecil Childs and his 14 year old daughter Noah set up camp beside the river on a property called ‘One Tree’. They are drovers – driving pigs, destined to become bacon in Sydney. Cecil Childs hurries off to town, anxious to drink with his mates. Noah, who wasn’t really aware that she was pregnant, gives birth to a premature baby in the company of the pigs. The father of this baby, Noah’s Uncle Nipper, is dead.
A few days later, Rowley Nancarrow, an Australian champion showjumper and the only son of the farmers of ‘One Tree’ watches a slight girl on a big bay gelding taking the jumps at the local show. Roley, as he is universally known, watches her and admires her courage. Roley goes looking for Noah, and gives her a strange small object - like a piece of shrivelled bread, for luck. This object, called foal’s bread, is sometimes present when a foal is born and is often regarded as bringing luck.
And so begins the story of Noah and Roley’s life together during the cruellest decades in the 20th century. The small country district of New South Wales in which they live has elements, still, of pioneering life. Annual shows with serious equestrian events are the highlight of the year, and Roley and Noah dream of success. Living with Roley’s family at ‘One Tree’ has its challenges: Roley’s mother Minna had high hopes for her son, and her dreams did not include a girl with obvious ‘dark’ blood possessed of drunken aunties and a mindless father.
‘The luckiness and unluckiness of any life.’
Unfortunately, life becomes complicated for Roley and Noah. Any luck that Roley may have had seems to leave him, and Noah struggles with some demons of her own. The novel is written in a vernacular that captures the lives and times of the characters. Sometimes, this seems contrived and doesn’t work – but not in this novel. I’ve heard echoes of this same vernacular in the third quarter of last century, but not since.
This novel traverses some difficult issues: Noah’s sexual abuse by her Uncle Nipper (whom she mostly loves, for he showed her kindness) reverberates throughout her life; Roley’s illness takes away his (and their) dreams. Lainey, we learn, has found a place in the world. Ms Mears manages, in fewer than 360 pages, to observe the handicaps of gender and health and the impacts of love, luck and race in a small geographic space near an edge of Australian society during the first half of the 20th century.
The novel ends with a 21st century Coda. Roley and Noah are long dead, and their daughter Lainey (herself now elderly) returns briefly to the district. Accompanying Lainey, and mindful of the time that has elapsed, distance enables us to experience a different dimension to Roley and Noah’s story.
I found this novel intensely moving: the writing is superb and the characters are brilliantly realised.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
September 3, 2016
For over 2/3rds of this novel, I was bored to hell and driven nuts. It took way, way too long for me to get through it & I felt like dozens of pages reminded me of mentally swimming in molasses. Why?
Unlike everyone else on Goodreads, who have gushed over this novel, I have read Katherine Susannah Prichard, Kylie Tennant, Vance & Nellie Palmer. I had problems telling Mears apart from these authors – which is a problem for me seeing as they wrote in the 30s to 60s & Mears is supposed to be a contemporary. Most, if not all of the characters were stereotypical and rather cardboard cut-out. The narrative was slow in much of the telling, and I never warmed to the plot. Surely we have done the hateful controlling mother-in-law towards the daughter-in-law storyline to death by now & can move on.
What did I like to move it to 2-stars? Well, Mears deals well with incest and child abuse. Both topics are done well, without being maudlin, preachy or revolting. The scenes in the show ring are well written, exciting, and carry the atmosphere. The character’s language is authentic – we have plenty of examples in film, books and - for Mears & myself - in our childhood.
The ending gave me mixed feelings. The drawn out final scenes reminded me of White’s Tree of Man death scene and here are probably Mears most inspired writing. However, the ratcheted tension between Minna & Noah had to end with only two possibilities. Mears chose the literally one, which is fine, but killed the realism of the turgid parts of the book.
I much preferred her earlier works.
Unlike everyone else on Goodreads, who have gushed over this novel, I have read Katherine Susannah Prichard, Kylie Tennant, Vance & Nellie Palmer. I had problems telling Mears apart from these authors – which is a problem for me seeing as they wrote in the 30s to 60s & Mears is supposed to be a contemporary. Most, if not all of the characters were stereotypical and rather cardboard cut-out. The narrative was slow in much of the telling, and I never warmed to the plot. Surely we have done the hateful controlling mother-in-law towards the daughter-in-law storyline to death by now & can move on.
What did I like to move it to 2-stars? Well, Mears deals well with incest and child abuse. Both topics are done well, without being maudlin, preachy or revolting. The scenes in the show ring are well written, exciting, and carry the atmosphere. The character’s language is authentic – we have plenty of examples in film, books and - for Mears & myself - in our childhood.
The ending gave me mixed feelings. The drawn out final scenes reminded me of White’s Tree of Man death scene and here are probably Mears most inspired writing. However, the ratcheted tension between Minna & Noah had to end with only two possibilities. Mears chose the literally one, which is fine, but killed the realism of the turgid parts of the book.
I much preferred her earlier works.
April 28, 2013
This bowled me over. I hope it becomes an Australian classic.
December 14, 2011
The novel Foal’s Bread’ is a very fine piece of writing indeed in which author Gillian Mears has drawn from aspects of her knowledge of horses and the jump-circuit events at country shows as well as her own early life in northern NSW farming country. The setting for the novel is the ‘hardscrabble’ countryside to be found in northern NSW during the period prior to World War II.
As much as it is a love story Foal’s Bread also evokes the day-to-day harshness and unrelenting hard work required to run and maintain a dairy farm; in this case the fictitious One Tree that is the home of the Nancarrow clan.
Noah Childs is just 14 years of age when the story opens on the arrival of Little Mister whose fate will haunt Noah at various times in her troubled life. The stoic Noah has a love of horses, riding and jumping that culminates in her introduction to the country show jump circuit and to Roley Nancarrow. The smitten Roley courts this ‘scrap of a girl’ arriving back at One Tree for Christmas where his announcement that he intends to marry Noah Childs isn’t greeted with delight. Noah is part Aboriginal, her father and her aunts are heavy drinkers and her father has worked for neighbours where through mistreatment he killed a horse. Minna, Roley’s mother, doesn’t bother to hide her disappointment. Thus all the pieces are in place for a dramatic family saga with horses as much as these two very-much-in-love people at its centre.
The novel also has themes of luck and superstition as well as symbols such as the Jacaranda tree and the heart that is motif on the Nancarrow colours. Lightning is an ominous force overshadowing the lives of those on the farms, and the nearby river The Flaggy also has its role to play in the fortunes of the farm and its inhabitants. There is a great sense of the space of the place, the silence to be found riding in that space even as there are threats to a person’s wellbeing.
Roley and Noah have two children – a daughter Elaine, fondly called Lainey and a son George born with downs syndrome yet very much part of everyday family living, which was not a common occurrence in those times. Both children are good riders and Lainey has all the signs of the champion rider. George is also a good rider; a gentle soul who loves cats and collects rocks and when he finds a river rock in which the shape of a heart has been detailed by the white marking embedded within, it is deemed an omen of good fortune. In telling this tale the author avoids the trap of happy-ever-after, unravelling a gritty, compelling narrative that the reader should savour slowly allowing time to process emotions that will certainly occur along the way. It made me laugh, gasp with shock, become angry, wallow in feelings of sadness and even lead to the occasional teary moment.
Definitely one of my best reads of 2011, I had wanted to read this novel after hearing Gillian Mears in an interview on ABC Radio National’s wonderful The Book Show (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/p...). She spoke about her love of horses and cats, her sister’s gift of a foal’s bread that had dried into the shape of a heart. Yes foal’s bread is real. It may sometimes be found in the foal’s mouth at birth, but not always, hence it is deemed to be lucky.
I’d like to thank Allen & Unwin for the opportunity to read the uncorrected proof of this novel.
As much as it is a love story Foal’s Bread also evokes the day-to-day harshness and unrelenting hard work required to run and maintain a dairy farm; in this case the fictitious One Tree that is the home of the Nancarrow clan.
Noah Childs is just 14 years of age when the story opens on the arrival of Little Mister whose fate will haunt Noah at various times in her troubled life. The stoic Noah has a love of horses, riding and jumping that culminates in her introduction to the country show jump circuit and to Roley Nancarrow. The smitten Roley courts this ‘scrap of a girl’ arriving back at One Tree for Christmas where his announcement that he intends to marry Noah Childs isn’t greeted with delight. Noah is part Aboriginal, her father and her aunts are heavy drinkers and her father has worked for neighbours where through mistreatment he killed a horse. Minna, Roley’s mother, doesn’t bother to hide her disappointment. Thus all the pieces are in place for a dramatic family saga with horses as much as these two very-much-in-love people at its centre.
The novel also has themes of luck and superstition as well as symbols such as the Jacaranda tree and the heart that is motif on the Nancarrow colours. Lightning is an ominous force overshadowing the lives of those on the farms, and the nearby river The Flaggy also has its role to play in the fortunes of the farm and its inhabitants. There is a great sense of the space of the place, the silence to be found riding in that space even as there are threats to a person’s wellbeing.
Roley and Noah have two children – a daughter Elaine, fondly called Lainey and a son George born with downs syndrome yet very much part of everyday family living, which was not a common occurrence in those times. Both children are good riders and Lainey has all the signs of the champion rider. George is also a good rider; a gentle soul who loves cats and collects rocks and when he finds a river rock in which the shape of a heart has been detailed by the white marking embedded within, it is deemed an omen of good fortune. In telling this tale the author avoids the trap of happy-ever-after, unravelling a gritty, compelling narrative that the reader should savour slowly allowing time to process emotions that will certainly occur along the way. It made me laugh, gasp with shock, become angry, wallow in feelings of sadness and even lead to the occasional teary moment.
Definitely one of my best reads of 2011, I had wanted to read this novel after hearing Gillian Mears in an interview on ABC Radio National’s wonderful The Book Show (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/p...). She spoke about her love of horses and cats, her sister’s gift of a foal’s bread that had dried into the shape of a heart. Yes foal’s bread is real. It may sometimes be found in the foal’s mouth at birth, but not always, hence it is deemed to be lucky.
I’d like to thank Allen & Unwin for the opportunity to read the uncorrected proof of this novel.
July 3, 2016
'Foal's Bread' is grim, jubilant, violent, gentle, magical, heartbreaking and uplifting all at the same time. I would probably give this 4.5 stars, but happy to round to 5 because it's so wonderfully written and I don't think I'll ever forget any of the characters. This book has to be destined to become an Australian classic.
Set in the 1910s and 20s, it follows a family of farmers and horse jumpers - mostly Noey, her husband Roley, and her daughter Lainey. The story isn't plot driven but there is so much going on...Noey losing a baby as a teen to her pedophile uncle, then marrying young, having two kids, keeping a dairy farm going, Roley getting struck by lightning, Noey and Roley's mum's volatile relationship...as well as horse training and breeding, anger problems, alcohol problems, weather problems, sex problems, small town problems, the kids growing up, etc. But it all feels really integrated, and the drama of family life becomes complicated and wondrous, validating human experience in even the most mundane, or most upsetting, situations.
The prose is to die for. It's brimful of Australian vernacular, not just in its use of 'fair dinkum' type words, but the syntax, the words, the characters, the entire story. It's so poetic and lyrical, and yet also blunt and direct, and managed to convey complex ideas within a few words. The 'foal's bread' - a literal thing that sometimes comes out with the placenta when horses give birth, and which is traditionally kept for luck -that Noey and Roley find and hang over their hut becomes an overarching metaphor for the story, for the love that creeps back into Noey's heart and through her children and her horses, even in her darkest moments. Even though it sounds like super-obvious symbolism, it doesn't read like that at all... it really works. Mears make it feel real somehow. Though I imagine some readers might find it a little sentimental.
There are bits that are hard to read, particularly Noey's memories of her relationship with her uncle, her inability to see the inappropriateness of it all, and some other bad sex stuff that I won't go into because of spoilers, and Noey's increasingly bad temper which leads to animal abuse, and a fraught relationship with her family. But mostly the characters are all endearing and infuriating, I hated and loved Noah the whole way through, as I did with most of her family members. It's hard to say much else about this novel because it encompassed so much. But if you love delicious prose, and don't mind a character-based, slow burn of a story, then read this one.
from juliatulloh.com
Set in the 1910s and 20s, it follows a family of farmers and horse jumpers - mostly Noey, her husband Roley, and her daughter Lainey. The story isn't plot driven but there is so much going on...Noey losing a baby as a teen to her pedophile uncle, then marrying young, having two kids, keeping a dairy farm going, Roley getting struck by lightning, Noey and Roley's mum's volatile relationship...as well as horse training and breeding, anger problems, alcohol problems, weather problems, sex problems, small town problems, the kids growing up, etc. But it all feels really integrated, and the drama of family life becomes complicated and wondrous, validating human experience in even the most mundane, or most upsetting, situations.
The prose is to die for. It's brimful of Australian vernacular, not just in its use of 'fair dinkum' type words, but the syntax, the words, the characters, the entire story. It's so poetic and lyrical, and yet also blunt and direct, and managed to convey complex ideas within a few words. The 'foal's bread' - a literal thing that sometimes comes out with the placenta when horses give birth, and which is traditionally kept for luck -that Noey and Roley find and hang over their hut becomes an overarching metaphor for the story, for the love that creeps back into Noey's heart and through her children and her horses, even in her darkest moments. Even though it sounds like super-obvious symbolism, it doesn't read like that at all... it really works. Mears make it feel real somehow. Though I imagine some readers might find it a little sentimental.
There are bits that are hard to read, particularly Noey's memories of her relationship with her uncle, her inability to see the inappropriateness of it all, and some other bad sex stuff that I won't go into because of spoilers, and Noey's increasingly bad temper which leads to animal abuse, and a fraught relationship with her family. But mostly the characters are all endearing and infuriating, I hated and loved Noah the whole way through, as I did with most of her family members. It's hard to say much else about this novel because it encompassed so much. But if you love delicious prose, and don't mind a character-based, slow burn of a story, then read this one.
from juliatulloh.com
January 12, 2013
Like many of the other reviews I have read since finishing this book, I am unsure if I liked it or not. I think, not.
I didn't like many of the characters with the exception of Rol and Lainey, who were the only two warm, kind and insightful people in the book.
Noah was a very damaged girl and woman who was completely unable to express her love for those nearest to her and dealt with negative emotions by lashing out at animals and drinking.
As a horse and animal lover, I was surprised by the main character's abuse of animals and people. Poor George being chained up like a dog and also, Old Uncle Owen, although he did deserve what was given to him.
Still, I felt complelled to keep reading to the end, an ending that was very befitting of the feel of the book.
I didn't like many of the characters with the exception of Rol and Lainey, who were the only two warm, kind and insightful people in the book.
Noah was a very damaged girl and woman who was completely unable to express her love for those nearest to her and dealt with negative emotions by lashing out at animals and drinking.
As a horse and animal lover, I was surprised by the main character's abuse of animals and people. Poor George being chained up like a dog and also, Old Uncle Owen, although he did deserve what was given to him.
Still, I felt complelled to keep reading to the end, an ending that was very befitting of the feel of the book.
May 19, 2016
It took me a while to read this, and it's not 'enjoyable' reading, but to understand the human condition better, it's well worth reading.
See my review at http://anzlitlovers.com/2011/10/15/fo...
See my review at http://anzlitlovers.com/2011/10/15/fo...
December 26, 2016
A brilliant book. Urgent, lyrical and engrossing. I never expected to be so captivated by a book that is essentially a love song to horses. Read the whole book in one greedy page-turning day.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
February 1, 2018
Setting: NSW, Australia; 1920s on. This saga of an Australian farming family through the best and worst of times starts with 14 year old Noah Childs (strange name for a girl!) on a pig drive with her father, collecting a herd from farms in the region to be driven to the nearest port and thence to slaughter. The lives of Noah, her father and many of the characters in the story orbit around horses and, in particular, the horse show circuit, in particular the riding and jumping competitions that take place there. It is at one of these shows that Noah meets Roley Nancarrow, a man some ten years her senior, who is taken by this fresh and naive girl who doesn't even know of his fame as state and national record holder for horse jumping. When they marry, Noah must get used to life in the Nancarrow household with Roley's mother (who she never seems able to please) and sisters - but she soon establishes herself as both a farmer, farrier and horse rider extraordinaire. But Noah has a dark secret that sometimes returns to haunt her...
I loved this tale - wonderfully evocative descriptions of setting and action, peopled by believable characters, it really made me feel I was there and reminded me of my time in Australia as a child when my father was president of the local pony club in Orange, NSW (although that was in the 1960s, the showgrounds and competitions were still very similar!). There was one major disappointment for me relating to Noah which I can't reveal as I don't want to include a spoiler in the review but consequently can only award 4 stars. Great read though! 9/10.
I loved this tale - wonderfully evocative descriptions of setting and action, peopled by believable characters, it really made me feel I was there and reminded me of my time in Australia as a child when my father was president of the local pony club in Orange, NSW (although that was in the 1960s, the showgrounds and competitions were still very similar!). There was one major disappointment for me relating to Noah which I can't reveal as I don't want to include a spoiler in the review but consequently can only award 4 stars. Great read though! 9/10.
October 3, 2018
3 1/2 * read along time ago, but remember I liked it.
January 16, 2015
I first came across Gillian Mears' Foal's Bread in 2012 when participants of the Australian Women Writers Challenge posted their reviews. Eleven reviews appeared that year, the vast majority of which were laudatory. This was a special book, I realised. It could sneak inside your soul, break your heart, move even the most prosaic reviewer to poetry.
Opening the beautiful dust jacket with its glimpse of a galloping horse, I began to read, only soon to slam the book shut again. The initial pages are so horrifically distressing, and yet so beautifully told, I knew I’d need to be stronger to withstand the emotional onslaught.
Years passed and I tried again. This time, I persisted. I read about how in the early twentieth-century a young Aboriginal girl, Noah, finds herself in an intolerable situation, battles through as best she can, has children before she’s fully grown up, and marries a man who, like her, is a champion horse rider. I read of Noah’s strength as mother, farmer and farrier, as her husband Roly succumbs to a mysterious illness, the birth of her daughter Lainey who, like Noah herself, has the talent to become a champion rider. I read how the events of those first few pages haunt Noah through the years until she at last comes to terms with them.
For me the beauty of this story isn’t in the plot. It isn’t even in the language – though that is exquisite. It’s in the truth it conveys about a very difficult subject. One of the facets of certain kinds of childhood sexual assault that many people don’t understand is how survivors can respond. Often the abuser has the child’s trust; sometimes the abuser is just about the only person ever to have shown the child kindness; sometimes the child’s own nascent sexual feelings are stimulated by the sexual violation of their boundaries, so that they don’t even recognise the abuse as abuse. They respond to it as if it were love.
Mears has depicted the complexity of this childhood response with remarkable sensitivity. Her portrayal of Noah as a survivor is done with such understanding and compassion that I find myself in awe at her skill. There is also a great wisdom in her portrayal of how victims can become perpetrators of one kind or another. "Hurt people hurt people”, Mears suggests. It’s a remarkable gift for a writer to convey both the horror of the abuse and such deep compassion.
As its publisher’s page attests, Foal’s Bread has been nominated for and won an outstanding number of awards:
Short-listed, Adelaide Festival Award for Literature, Fiction, 2014
Winner, Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2012
Winner, ALS Gold Medal, 2012
Winner, 60th Annual Book Design Awards, Best Designed Literary Fiction, 2012
Winner, The Age Book of the Year Award Fiction, 2012
Winner, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2012
Winner, Colin Roderick Award, 2012
Short-listed, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, 2013
Short-listed, Indie Awards, Fiction prize, 2012
Short-listed, Barbara Jefferis Award, 2012
Short-listed, Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2012
Short-listed, Nita B. Kibble Award, 2012
Short-listed, Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year, 2012
Short-listed, West Australian Premier’s Book Award, 2012
Having finally read it, I now know why.
Opening the beautiful dust jacket with its glimpse of a galloping horse, I began to read, only soon to slam the book shut again. The initial pages are so horrifically distressing, and yet so beautifully told, I knew I’d need to be stronger to withstand the emotional onslaught.
Years passed and I tried again. This time, I persisted. I read about how in the early twentieth-century a young Aboriginal girl, Noah, finds herself in an intolerable situation, battles through as best she can, has children before she’s fully grown up, and marries a man who, like her, is a champion horse rider. I read of Noah’s strength as mother, farmer and farrier, as her husband Roly succumbs to a mysterious illness, the birth of her daughter Lainey who, like Noah herself, has the talent to become a champion rider. I read how the events of those first few pages haunt Noah through the years until she at last comes to terms with them.
For me the beauty of this story isn’t in the plot. It isn’t even in the language – though that is exquisite. It’s in the truth it conveys about a very difficult subject. One of the facets of certain kinds of childhood sexual assault that many people don’t understand is how survivors can respond. Often the abuser has the child’s trust; sometimes the abuser is just about the only person ever to have shown the child kindness; sometimes the child’s own nascent sexual feelings are stimulated by the sexual violation of their boundaries, so that they don’t even recognise the abuse as abuse. They respond to it as if it were love.
Mears has depicted the complexity of this childhood response with remarkable sensitivity. Her portrayal of Noah as a survivor is done with such understanding and compassion that I find myself in awe at her skill. There is also a great wisdom in her portrayal of how victims can become perpetrators of one kind or another. "Hurt people hurt people”, Mears suggests. It’s a remarkable gift for a writer to convey both the horror of the abuse and such deep compassion.
As its publisher’s page attests, Foal’s Bread has been nominated for and won an outstanding number of awards:
Short-listed, Adelaide Festival Award for Literature, Fiction, 2014
Winner, Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2012
Winner, ALS Gold Medal, 2012
Winner, 60th Annual Book Design Awards, Best Designed Literary Fiction, 2012
Winner, The Age Book of the Year Award Fiction, 2012
Winner, Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction, 2012
Winner, Colin Roderick Award, 2012
Short-listed, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for Fiction, 2013
Short-listed, Indie Awards, Fiction prize, 2012
Short-listed, Barbara Jefferis Award, 2012
Short-listed, Miles Franklin Literary Award, 2012
Short-listed, Nita B. Kibble Award, 2012
Short-listed, Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year, 2012
Short-listed, West Australian Premier’s Book Award, 2012
Having finally read it, I now know why.
March 11, 2013
I've just finished this book and oh, how I cry. You know how certain people you meet in books keep giving you their stories years after you first read them? I strongly suspect I will never forget these horses and the hurts of this complex family.
Mears gets that once you're horsemad, you're horsemad forever and there is simply no other way of looking at the world. Mears gets the poetry of the horse, especially the spirt of the raggedy bush-basher and how it feels to finally experience that perfect relationship after struggling through their training. Yes, there is horse abuse which is hard and uncomfortable reading, but Mears has done her research. I had such hate for Noah when she hurt these horses, it's ugly, brutal and sadly, truthful. To me, Noah's redemption occurs when she finally removes that horrible bit from poor Magpie. I suspect others might see it at a slightly later event but this is where she finally starts to forgive herself.
It took me over a year to finish this masterpiece, purely because it deserved the focus and attention that only certain phases of life provide in understanding something so much greater than ourselves.
Mears gets that once you're horsemad, you're horsemad forever and there is simply no other way of looking at the world. Mears gets the poetry of the horse, especially the spirt of the raggedy bush-basher and how it feels to finally experience that perfect relationship after struggling through their training. Yes, there is horse abuse which is hard and uncomfortable reading, but Mears has done her research. I had such hate for Noah when she hurt these horses, it's ugly, brutal and sadly, truthful. To me, Noah's redemption occurs when she finally removes that horrible bit from poor Magpie. I suspect others might see it at a slightly later event but this is where she finally starts to forgive herself.
It took me over a year to finish this masterpiece, purely because it deserved the focus and attention that only certain phases of life provide in understanding something so much greater than ourselves.
February 3, 2013
I liked it. The prose is beautiful, no doubt about it. Each character has a harrowing story. The way the author toys with language, especially dialogue, is interesting and makes for an absorbing read.
I did feel that Mears dropped the ball on a lot of the themes, though. There are some really strong threads and beginnings of themes: the foal's bread being the most obvious, but also the lightning, the jacaranda, the alcoholism. Each of these elements seems to just prod at the edges of being fully fledged, as though they haven't been explored in their proper depth.
There were also a few allusions that never seemed to be realised, as if Mears had forgotten she'd written them: a scene that speaks of Lainey seeing a crescent moon for the last time (??) and another that suggests getting back to the farm that evening will bring about some doom that never happens.
Ultimately I wonder whether this would have been a more powerful book had it been given more chance to really say something, rather than cramming in every part of life in rural Australia.
I did feel that Mears dropped the ball on a lot of the themes, though. There are some really strong threads and beginnings of themes: the foal's bread being the most obvious, but also the lightning, the jacaranda, the alcoholism. Each of these elements seems to just prod at the edges of being fully fledged, as though they haven't been explored in their proper depth.
There were also a few allusions that never seemed to be realised, as if Mears had forgotten she'd written them: a scene that speaks of Lainey seeing a crescent moon for the last time (??) and another that suggests getting back to the farm that evening will bring about some doom that never happens.
Ultimately I wonder whether this would have been a more powerful book had it been given more chance to really say something, rather than cramming in every part of life in rural Australia.
November 18, 2012
While I like this book, and really respect the writing ability of Gillian Mears, I couldn't fall in love with it.
Pros:
- descriptions of the landscape, emotions, relationships between characters
- the picture painted of horse jumping, country shows, etc
Cons:
- I couldn't feel where the book was going a lot of the time. Maybe that's just me
- I couldn't connect to most of the characters
Pros:
- descriptions of the landscape, emotions, relationships between characters
- the picture painted of horse jumping, country shows, etc
Cons:
- I couldn't feel where the book was going a lot of the time. Maybe that's just me
- I couldn't connect to most of the characters
October 4, 2015
I think my ratings for this book suffered from my overly high expectations. It had some interesting ideas, but they never fully resonated with me. I felt I was reading from a distance, and didn't engage with the main characters, which was a shame - their lives were full of experiences that called out for connection. I think it could just be me, though.
November 12, 2019
One day I'll get back to this...
And I did, however many years later.
Another gift from my Dad, he chooses good books. He's even been known to give me the same book on diff gift occassions. They were the really good ones!
And I did, however many years later.
Put your ponies into a gallop and fly for home.
Another gift from my Dad, he chooses good books. He's even been known to give me the same book on diff gift occassions. They were the really good ones!
February 1, 2017
There's a line on page 220 that made the whole book worth reading.
Read
August 13, 2016For me, this book captured the essence of Australia, held it up to the moonlight to let it shine. R.I.P Gillian. Thank you for your songs.
August 2, 2024
Read as part of BCBE#21 in the category of book with a punctuation mark in the title.
When it comes to bringing characters alive on the page, Gillian Mears is masterful. All the characters in Foal's Bread are drawn in detail, we come to know them so well.
Although horses aren't my greatest love, nor tales of the Australian bush, I loved this book for the reality, the sense of inevitability, the clarity with which the characters are drawn and the passion that the author brings to the everyday events of the book (and those that are not so everyday!)
One cannot but be drawn in to the story of Noah and her daughter, their family's obsession with horse jumping, the hardness of life on the farm and the ultimate sadness (or is it a form of joy?) with which the book ends.
Highly recommended and I'll be looking for more of her books. *****
When it comes to bringing characters alive on the page, Gillian Mears is masterful. All the characters in Foal's Bread are drawn in detail, we come to know them so well.
Although horses aren't my greatest love, nor tales of the Australian bush, I loved this book for the reality, the sense of inevitability, the clarity with which the characters are drawn and the passion that the author brings to the everyday events of the book (and those that are not so everyday!)
One cannot but be drawn in to the story of Noah and her daughter, their family's obsession with horse jumping, the hardness of life on the farm and the ultimate sadness (or is it a form of joy?) with which the book ends.
Highly recommended and I'll be looking for more of her books. *****
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