Culture corner: Blue Buckle book review

CULTURE CORNER

Book Review

An exploration of the way in which horses influence our lives and how we influence theirs, CARON KRAUTH shares her musings on Karin P. Schaefer’s recently published Blue Buckle.

As a child, long before I owned my own horses, I galloped through endless pony books by British authors such as the Pullein-Thompson sisters and immersed myself in stories about gymkhanas, hunting with hounds, eventing, show jumping and racing. Karin Schaefer’s Blue Buckle is the first adult novel I’ve read which has an Aussie perspective on the topics of hunting and to a lesser extent, horse racing. In Australia horse racing and Hunt Clubs have a long colonial history, with British settlers in the 1800s first using trapped dingoes as quarry before the red fox was imported specifically for hunting.

Schaefer uses the worlds and cultures of both The Hunt and of horse racing and the connotations of wealth and prestige that accompany them, in order to look at the very different and complex ways in which we relate to the animals we live with, love and use: as companions, teachers, familiars, valuable property, symbols of prestige, objects of admiration and embodiments of godliness, fidelity, wildness and freedom.

The main protagonist, talented artist India Levy, arrives from London to Burragong, a beautiful village in the Southern Highlands of NSW. She carries little luggage but significant baggage from her past. Her grandmother, Grace, much loved by her many friends in the Highlands Hunt Club, has died and left her Burragong property to India. friends have

different ideas.

The novel immerses us in the day to day lives, loves, and hates of the community and its inhabitants, who are very different to each other in terms of wealth and standing, but who are united in their passion for the Highlands Hunt Club and their animal companions. Grace may be dead, but her presence still looms large. She’s always been there to help or rescue those in need, whether human or animal, and she is sorely missed by her Hunt Club friends, with the notable exceptions of Lady Blythe and her son Lucien, owners of the prestigious Whistlejacket Thoroughbreds stud.

Adopted by Grace after her father overdosed and her mother took off to become a hippy guru, India associates her given name with unwanted alternative lifestyle connotations and for much of the novel uses her second name, Ann, which she sees as ‘safe’. Other names are also clues to the characters’ personalities. Grace was the giver of grace. Lucien is the shining son of Lady Blythe, described by Xavier, the impeccably dressed local real estate agent as “...the most beautiful shit in Burragong.” Lucien contains more than a little Lucifer, has slept with half of Burragong, and is busy working his way through the rest. The ‘Lady’ in Lady Blythe’s name is the result of the local hairdresser’s misheard introduction, and Pan Villon, animal communicator and rescuer, is “the woodland god”. Blue Buckle is the Blue Blood stallion from the Bluegrass of Kentucky purchased by Lucien for ten million dollars.

Since arriving at Whistlejacket Thoroughbreds, Blue Buckle is seemingly consumed by terrible rage and grief, to the point where he has buckled under and is dying. Lucien’s answer is to withhold food and water from the stallion in order to finish him off and then surreptitiously replace him with a substitute. Luckily there are true horse lovers like Leila, Donnacha and Beef working at the stud who devise a plan to try and save the dying horse by taking him to Pan.

The many other animals in the story are both rescued and rescuers. Jeffrey, Grace’s old rescue greyhound, symbol of fidelity, with eyes “like milky pools”, is like the loyal hound in the Yeats poem quoted by Grace when she first meets Pan in the local bookshop. And Pharlap, the huge fearsome, funny, gentle, chestnut pig, saved by Pan from becoming bacon, plays a brief but vital role in the story, and

There are beautiful sexy bitches and bastards, abundant miscommunications between couples, damaging and damaged relationships between parents and children, and themes of love in its many forms

Blue Buckle author Karin P. Schaefer

Frank Baines Elegance 17.5" $1,995

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Harry Dabbs Elegant 17" $3,300

is probably my favourite character in the book.

India is choosing which path she is going to take in her life and appears at one point to have been seduced, not by Lucien’s charm, but by his mother’s world of fabulous antiques and art works, including famous horse paintings. Grace’s place, Mars House, is on the other hand very different: “Amongst such opulence, ... a poor relation.” The house smells of stale wood smoke and fruit cake (reminding me of my own grandmother’s house) and is filled with “... mystical Aboriginal desert paintings”, as well as many of India’s own paintings. India paints in order to try and find the right way forward, to show “... where she had recently been, and where she might yet go” - and her prescient paintings of an image she thinks she’s seen of a small huddle of people in a bush clearing do indeed in the end help her to clarify her path.

The number of characters makes it difficult for the novel to explore and develop their relationships in any depth. There are beautiful sexy bitches and bastards, abundant miscommunications between couples, damaging and damaged relationships between parents and children, and themes of love in its many forms. Simple misunderstandings aren’t discussed and instead create what seem at the time to be unassailable rifts between lovers. How these are eventually resolved, and how India’s own journey progresses with the help of the Burragong locals, becomes clearer as the novel nears its end and the glamorous Highlands Hunt Ball approaches.

Though our relationships with animals have changed a great deal over the centuries, they continue to carry great social and symbolic weight. We love and cherish them, we use and abuse them, they remain our property and while we view them at times as godly, we are god-like in our capacity to control their lives. Schaefer writes with great familiarity and detail about the worlds of hunting and racing, but it isn’t necessary to have the same knowledge in order to enjoy this entertaining novel. It is a prerequisite however, to have a love of the animals we live with.