The Horse of Selene

by Juanita Casey

On a remote island off the West coast of Ireland in the 1970s, young farmer Miceal catches sight of a girl on a beach with long hair so blonde it could be white. Befriending the girl and her travelling companions, a world of possibility opens up to Miceal – but where there's opportunity, there is also peril ... Juanita Casey's astounding first novel is a cult classic ready to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers. Drawing on her own life and speaking for her marginalised community, Casey offers a feminist and class-conscious story that explores the eternal choices of youth, between the comfort of a stifling domesticity and the promise and risk of the unknown, characterised in the incomparable wildness of the West of Ireland. The bestselling Casey takes her place alongside such writers as JM Synge and Kevin Barry – the missing connection between the two.

193 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 26, 2022

About the author

Juanita Casey was a poet, playwright, novelist and artist as well as a horse and zebra trainer and breeder

Reviews

[Maddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A real slap in the face about how sometimes Love Just Don’t Work Out

[Eithne Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm blown away. I've never read anything like it. The language carried and tumbled me through the storm of the story and cast me off with its unexpected ending.
I think she's got into me.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Holy Mother who knows so much. Help me for I'm destroyed in the heart. Tell me is it love to be like this. That measures me on my days like the shadow on the mountain.” Juanita Casey’s somewhat neglected 1971 novel The Horse of Selene, newly republished by Tramp Press, with an incredibly informative afterword by Mary M Burke, is a gorgeous story of freedom, desire, nature and need, hailed upon its publication as a masterpiece, a classic, and Casey successor to Synge, Beckett, and so on. The novel focuses on Miceal, a farmer in Ireland’s western isles, whose life is blown off course when he meets the enigmatic Selene and her companions, and the horses she is so devoted to. “To her a horse was like the sea and the land. Neither yields yet both give. And the true control, the thin thread not of traditional silk but of concentration and will, of spirit and spirit.” Informed by and clearly in celebration of Casey’s Irish Traveller origins, it is a political novel that revels in the beauty and humour of the natural world: “Light transformed the lake to sapphire and the rivers to bronze, signalled among the quartz stones, ricocheted off walls. Cartwheels fizzed like comets, […] the light frothed and flickered and flung out the patched quilt of the island to the sun.” “In the rare sunlight, the band of horses […] grazed with gritty determination among the headstones once again”. Unspooling in prose as sharp as it is delicate, a kind of stream of consciousness, this is a stark and vital re-addition to the canon of Irish literature. “He is a horse of the sea and the stars and the earth. He is universal Horse”.

[Karen Quigley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as part of a subscription from John Sandoe Books in London. Unknown to me, but clearly on someone's short list. It is a beautiful, harsh tale, full of nature (both natural and human). Set in Ireland, it contrasts the hard subsistence life of local people with the casual transient tourists who overwhelm the landscape in the summer.

But it is more elemental than that. It is primarily about two people, a gypsy like, confident orphan with a talent for taming wild horses and a church-ridden brother who lives a limited, faithful life but is tempted by the powers of the gypsy and the passions that she awakes and encourages. In some sense, they each want what the other has but fail at the moment of grasping it.

The writing is lyrical, full of metaphors (sometimes too full - I had to put it down from time to time) but entirely descriptive of the geography and climate of a remote and beautiful part of Ireland. It is also full of people - the most delightful part of the book is the vignettes she draws of the villagers and the tourists and their puzzled interactions. The saddest part of the book is the weight that the church puts on the islanders and in particular Michael, the protagonist, whose patient, diligent attention is repaid by threats, fears and oppression. It kills him.

[Briana Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a beautiful book. So poetic and so full of detail and imagery - I’m sure I should read this again and again to fully absorb it all. The ending was a surprise to me… and I’m ok with it. In fact, I might even love it in some way. So many “if only” moments. Overall, so good!

[Anders Olofsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

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