Ghost Horse - Softcover

McNeely, Thomas H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 192858991X ISBN 13: 9781928589914

Publisher: Gival Press, 2014

Synopsis

2016 William Styron International Prize for Writing, Shortlist2015 Lascaux Prize in Fiction, Finalist2014 Gival Press Novel Award
I know of few other novels that so powerfully evoke the chaos andpowerlessness of childhood, even fewer that do so with such power andbrilliance.- Margot Livesey, author of Mercury and Eva Moves the Furniture
An adventure of feeling and intelligence, frightening in its penetration to the depth of a child's anguish, Ghost Horse is a masterful novel.- James Carroll, author of An American Requiem, National Book Award Winner
Set amidst the social tensions of 1970's Houston, Ghost Horse tells the story of eleven-year-old Buddy Turner's shifting alliances within his fragmented family and with two other boys--one Anglo, one Latino--in their quest to make a Super-8 animated movie. As his father's many secrets begin to unravel, Buddy discovers the real movie: the intersection between life as he sees it and the truth of his own past. In a vivid story of love, friendship, and betrayal, Ghost Horse explores a boy's swiftly changing awareness of himself and the world through the lens of imagination.
KIRKUS REVIEWA Texas boy grapples with his parents' estrangement in McNeely's debut novel.
Eleven-year-old Buddy lives with his mother in 1970s Houston at a time when proper, white middle-class living means that mothers don't work, parents don't divorce, and white children don't befriend the Mexican children down the street. Buddy's young life has missed all these supposed marks of propriety: His mother, Margot, works in a hospital laboratory; his absentee father, Jimmy, has blown back into town and wants a divorce; and Buddy spends much of his time with his Latino best friend, Alex, who's working on a film about a ghost horse. Buddy's torment slowly, steadily grows throughout this sensitive novel as his immature father and his bafflingly stubborn mother make him choose between them again and again. His cold grandparents, meanwhile, only exacerbate the bitter divide. He finally tries to find solace in a new friendship with a fellow student whose home life is similarly caustic. As he struggles to survive the failures of the adults around him, he careens down a path of unhappiness and destruction. McNeely beautifully portrays the confusion of a boy doing his best to deal with matters that are beyond his understanding but fully capable of doing him harm ("He wishes a sheet of fire would cut through the yard; he wishes [his mother] would disappear. But the questions still pulse, there, in the darkness: What will happen when his father comes back?"). The author effectively shows how evil is not born but made; as the grown-ups continue to pile their burdens on him, something hateful begins to bloom in Buddy that wasn't there before. Overall, the novel will be a haunting read for anyone who's experienced the childhood anguish of divorce and a powerful reminder to mothers and fathers of the unseen damage that their behavior can inflict on their children.
A dark, deeply stirring novel about the quiet tragedy of growing up in a broken family.

About this title

From the Author:

Ghost Horse took over a decade to write.  During that time, I lost my father to suicide.  Though I had started Ghost Horse before his death, it became apparent to me that the novel was a dialogue with him about our relationship, an attempt to understand his absence earlier in my life.  Along with being a book about the effects of divorce, it is also a story about friendship between boys, and how their relationships are affected by the larger society in which they live.  I wanted to explore a particular moment in growing up in the American South, in which white children were discouraged from continuing friendships with children of other races.  I hope that Ghost Horse will provide an opportunity for readers to discuss these and other issues, which persist in our society today:  How does a broken home affect children?  How do racism and classism affect their development as people and citizens?  How do we understand violence and bad acts by children as a consequence of these factors?

From the Inside Flap:

"An elegy for a lost father, an unforgettable fable of the power of art, Ghost Horse weaves a singular spell, captivating the reader and never letting go." --Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master's Son, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
"An adventure of feeling and intelligence, frightening in its penetration to the depth of a child's anguish, Ghost Horse is a masterful novel. The reader's heart opens to McNeely's characters, and does not ever quite close again. This brave compassion is what fiction is for." --James Carroll, author of An American Requiem, winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction

"The rich interior life of a boy among boys whose home life has gone disastrously wrong; the origins of evil; the secrets, and the secret codes, of school bullies; the terrible things that we do to find, or avoid, sex; how adults manipulate each other, and what they try to get from children; ancient Rome; stop-motion animation; the binding of Isaac; the story of Cain; the history of race and class in Houston; the fallout of what looks like a slow-motion divorce--these are just some of the pieces that click into place within McNeely's terrifyingly sensitive novel, which finds a whole world of deceit and imagination among a couple of families and a boys' grade-school cabal. McNeely's prose--superbly attentive to what goes on in Buddy's head, and why--sets up scenes few readers will forget: it's a novel whose beautiful sentences match the wrong-way turns, the blood-red futilities, and the available insights, of its rough lives."  -- Stephen Burt, author of Belmont and Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry

"In Ghost Horse, his excellent debut novel, Thomas McNeely skillfully offers up the dark mysteries of the adult world through the eyes of a child. Wise, insightful, and exquisitely written, it lays bare the heartbreak of family life and lost friendship against the back drop of class and racial difference. Ghost Horse is that rare fictional rendering that truly illuminates real life."
--Rishi Reddi, author of Karma and Other Stories, winner of the L. L. Winship / PEN New England Award

"Thomas McNeely is a beautiful writer. I've read drafts of this book over the last ten years and I've been waiting all that time for the finished product. This is an incredible book about love and family and growing up. But mostly it's about the mysteries of the human heart." --Stephen Elliott, editor of The Rumpus; author of Happy Baby and The Adderall Diaries

"Ghost Horse is a wrenching, poignant, and beautiful novel. McNeely evokes the searing landscapes of youth and South Texas with nuance and power. This is a story that stays with you like the long days of your last childhood summer, shading everything in your memory." --Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like This and Corpus Christi: Stories

"In this dark, swirling, atmospheric novel Thomas McNeely brings to life the world of Buddy Turner and his deeply troubled parents and grandparents during a few desperate months in the mid-70s. Even as Buddy struggles to keep faith with his film about the ghost horse and his collaborator, Alex, the adults around him keep changing shape, keep lying. I know of few other novels that so powerfully evoke the chaos and powerlessness of childhood, even fewer that do so with such power and brilliance. Ghost Horse is a wonderful and compulsively readable debut." --Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The House on Fortune Street, winner of the L.L. Winship / PEN New England Award for Fiction

About this edition

• Publisher: Gival Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 192858991X
• ISBN 13: 9781928589914
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 260