The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (review)

B o o k R e v ie w s 3 2 3 (80, 181). His critical analysis of a diverse collection of art collaborates with biographical research to support his thesis. Papanikolas’s work includes a list of illustrations and what he terms an overture, or opening proposal. His work closes with a surprisingly diverse list of acknowledgments, some not-very-helpful twenty pages of notes, and a ninepage index. The Qod of Animals. By Aryn Kyle. New York: Scribner, 2007. 305 pages, $25.00/$ 14-00. Reviewed by Andrea Clark Mason Washington State University, Pullman Aryn Kyle’s debut novel, The God of Animals, is a rarity: a first novel that doesn’t read like one. Kyle takes us into a small community, Desert Valley, Colorado, where class and cultural tensions are high. Twelve-year-old Alice Winston suffers from preadolescent angst compounded by the weight of a class­ mate’s death. The absence of her sister, Nona, who left town to marry a rodeo rider, and her mother’s twelve-year disappearance into the bedroom under the guise of “being tired” only exacerbate Alice’s struggles, which she alleviates through long, secret phone conversations with her English teacher. Although the reader can’t help but wonder how Alice has coped when her mother has been in bed for nearly all of Alice’s life, something changes when her father decides to take on a riding student to replace Alice’s sister, formerly the best rider in town. The new student, Sheila, is from a world Alice doesn’t know or understand. Sheila’s mother has a new SUV, her father is a professor, and they have a spacious house on the other side of town. Sheila’s mother buys her daughter Nona’s old horse, and Alice can’t resist hoping that Sheila’s skills as an equestrian will never live up to Nona’s. Between mucking out the stalls, eating burgers with her father, and trying to fit into clothes she has outgrown long ago, Alice begins to understand that her sister’sdeparture, her classmate’s death, and her father’s make-do attitude are all more complicated than they seem. Faced with increasing difficulties—the air conditioner breaks in one of the hottest summers on record, the competing stable becomes successful at attracting riders who win ribbons, and the horse Alice’s father has bought won’t be broken—Winston Stables begins boarding horses for rich women from the other side of town: “ ‘Compromise,’ he told me. ‘That’s what business is all about. Sometimes you’ve gotta eat shit’” (38). Alice watches her father’s life and her own become entwined with the women whose shiny hair, suede jackets, and pointy shoes simultaneously attract and repel them. The boarders’ horses prefer sawdust to straw and mineral water to hose water. Somewhere in the midst of Alice’s family’s transformation and her own, she begins to understand her place in a world where the lives of horses and humans, past and present all connect. 3 2 4 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e F a l l 2 0 0 8 Kyle’s attention to character development and plot are to be envied, and she has added to western American literature a portrayal of contemporary culture in many small, western towns. She has depicted the reticence and hard work that are part of a long-standing horse ranch and the newcomers’ unrealis­ tic expectations of the West and its people. Kyle has also successfully captured the darker side of the West: a family with its share of economic and emotional woes, the toll of a beautiful but harsh landscape, and the difficulty of living with animals and people and treating them both fairly. Realizing Westward: American Character and Cowboy Mythology. By Stephen P. Cook. Boston, MA: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2007. 172 pages, $56.00. Reviewed by Claire Hughes Weber State University, Ogden, Utah This collection of essays takes its title from the Robert Frost poem “The Gift Outright,” a poem that mourns our rough approach to the...