Foal's Bread

May 10, 2013 Trish rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: animals, australia, fiction, historical-novel, literature, one-for-the-ages

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...more 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.

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May 20, 2013 Jane rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Gillian Mears' novel Foal's Bread is set in 1920s New South Wales and is about a farming family and their love of horse jumping in various shows around the state. At that time high jumping was very popular, and horses were jumped over enormous heights- 8 feet one and a half inches is the record. Noah met Roley Nancarrow at one of these shows and soon they married much to the disappointment of Roley's mother who had other girls in mind than a half-wild girl with "dark" blood. When Noah and Roley...more

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Jan 19, 2013 Helen Stower rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: australian, family, realism, resilience, horses, animals

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 jum...more 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.

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Dec 05, 2012 Simone Sinna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 ill...more

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.
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Jul 18, 2012 Jillwilson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 writ...more 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.(less)

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Jan 12, 2012 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: australian, animals

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 13, 2011 Kay Hart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 ru...more 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.
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Nov 04, 2012 Boomerang rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book starts off strong with a 14 year old giving birth alone in a field then choosing to send her baby off down the river in a box rather than killing him.

I kept expecting the child to turn up at some point in the story but the author finds a darker way to reunite mother and son at the end of the novel.

This is a story about show-jumping and the close relationship some people have with horses, so not a world I'd previously come into contact with. The main character Noah has an incredibly tou...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: australiana

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...more

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Nov 21, 2011 Jennifer (JC-S) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jennifer (JC-S) by: fionnabhair@bigpond.com

Shelves: librarybooks

‘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...more ‘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
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May 20, 2012 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A lyrical almost musical novel that meanders along over a sometimes stoney stream. I enjoy any new approach to language (think Irvine Welsh,James Ellroy, Salman Rushdie)anything that forces us to rethink how language is or should be structured; a good slap in the face for our preconcieved notions of 'literature',but this one lost me in parts and, to be honest, I'm not sure why.The characters are lovingly drawn,the story unfolds neatly enough but I stopped caring somewhere along the line. Oh sure...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Karen Leopoldina rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I like books not horses, so to read a book about horses was always going to be a stretch. But it's such a sexy looking book with its tactile cover and that stunning photograph. So I thought why not: it felt good, it looked good and the weather all rain and grey skies, just perfect for cosying up with a heavy book. What struck me most was the quality of the writing. Mears' prose is lean and spare and she works her sentences hard as she tries to capture the almost elemental lives of people eking a...more

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Apr 07, 2012 Penni Russon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 th...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Alison rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: aussie

Gillian Mears captures the heart and voice of country Australia in Foal's Bread, her first novel after a sixteen year hiatus. Spanning a few decades from the Thirties, the story chronicles the highs and lows of the life of Noah Childs, a girl whose early experiences shape her into gritty, flinty, broken woman. A necessary but cold-hearted decision she makes as a motherless girl haunts her throughout her life. Noah is physically strong and loves fiercely, but she completely lacks an emotional voc...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Deborah Biancotti rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: aww2012, writer-women

I 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 r...more I 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. (less)

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Jan 11, 2013 Alken rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more

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May 20, 2012 Mandy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I did not enjoy reading this book but am glad I read it - difficult at times to get past the cruelty.

This is a story about the people who live on a poor and struggling dairy farm, set after mainly in a 20 period after WWI and continues until today. The voices of the characters are so strong and i found a sense of place that is realistic and frightening. It is about the harsh brutality of life on a farm, the struggle of keeping on when it is the only thing you can do. Any happiness is short lived...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Suzanne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hard to review this one. She's 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 ho...more

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May 20, 2012 MaryMartin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: australian, fiction

Mears makes you feel so emotionally invested in her characters. I really am having trouble putting into words just how powerful, evocative, yet so gentle this wonderful book is. Set against the backdrop of farm life between the two world wars, it is about how one mistake can haunt you forever – but more than that, it is a true love story. It really is full of all kinds of love. I think I will carry the story of Noah and Roley in my heart for a long time. Brimming with country life, particularly...more

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Mar 11, 2013 Clare rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 perfe...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 wi...more 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.

(less)

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Nov 26, 2012 Shelleyrae at Book'd Out rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc-are, aussie-author, provided-by-publisher

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 t...more

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Mar 03, 2012 Carol rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is great for a heap of reason no least being the evocative description of landscapes and people relationships to them but most of all it describes very well the experience of being an obsessive horse rider. If you ever need that explained to you, then read this book. I know Gillian lives in the country with horses - LIVING THE DREAM! It is also the story of a rugged survivor of sexual assault who reeks revenge. SPOILER ALERT STOP READING UNLESS YOU've READ THE BOOK Why do our heroines...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Sue rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

her last book was called the Mint Lawn, apporx 16 years ago.
Foal's Bread is to be read slowly - the narrative is so well crafted and beautiful. It's sad, but also a testament to the strong, resilient Australian spirit. Set againt the harsh elements of farming and bush life, Noah and Roley draw strength from each other - until Roley's debiliating illness drains them along with their dreams and aspirations. I am not 'that into horses' but I loved the descriptions of their horses and the life of '...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Bree T rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: aww2012, australian, historical-fiction, literary, family-saga, shortlisted-miles-franklin

It is 1926 in country Australia and 14yo Noah Childs and her father Cecil are in the middle of droving pigs, collecting them from the farms along their route to take them to Sydney to become dinner on many plates. Noah is left alone at the camp while her father and a couple of the men helping wander into town in search of a drink. What happens to her while she is alone will always haunt her in the back of her mind, always be a memory and the reason for which she will assume that things happen to...more It is 1926 in country Australia and 14yo Noah Childs and her father Cecil are in the middle of droving pigs, collecting them from the farms along their route to take them to Sydney to become dinner on many plates. Noah is left alone at the camp while her father and a couple of the men helping wander into town in search of a drink. What happens to her while she is alone will always haunt her in the back of her mind, always be a memory and the reason for which she will assume that things happen to her in the future.

It is merely days after that incident when Noah meets Rowley Nancarrow, often called Roley. Noah and her father are hitting a country show aiming to take part in the high jump on horseback and Noah is at first unaware that the young man that seeks her out is one of Australia’s finest jumpers. Roley gives Noah his good luck charm, something known as ‘foal’s bread’ and she tucks it into her bra, having no pockets. Noah’s father is often too sloshed to compete properly by the time the jumps come around so it is up to Noah and the ride that has been secured for her. They don’t win but Noah has utterly captured Roley’s attention and it seems from then on that they are a pair – competing together, wowing the crowds. Roley asks her to marry him and Noah moves out to One Tree, Roley’s family farm where she will discover, that the welcoming is not always warm.

Roley and Noah have a dream and that is to build their own team of jumping horses, travelling around to the shows and jumping records together. The dream is put on hold for Noah when she becomes pregnant with their first child, but Roley travels away to compete, making it back from Cairns just in time for the birth of their daughter Elaine, nicknamed Lainey. She will be on a pony from before she can walk, adding to Noah and Roley’s dream of running their own team one day. Roley’s father is supportive, looking for horses they might be able to buy, but Roley’s mother is resentful. She’s never quite accepted his marriage to Noah, never quite believed that Noah was good enough for her son, having a touch of Aboriginal in her and relatives that were quick to go for the drink.

Encompassing two generations of Nancarrows, Foal’s Bread is the story of pre-WW2 farming Australia, a time that is marked with the loss of WW1 but looking forward to the future and what it holds.

I’ve been meaning to read Foal’s Bread for some time. Marg from over at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader passed on a copy to me and I had always planned to read it for part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012. However the announcement of Gillian Mears’ In Conversation event at the Melbourne Writers Festival that I’ve booked in to attend had me bumping it right up the list so that I could finish it before I went to hear her talk. I’d heard a lot of amazing comments about this book on twitter, including a rather steady campaign that it should’ve been awarded the Miles Franklin award that went to All That I Am. I was underwhelmed by the winner’s depiction of Australian life, so I was very keen to read this one and see how it compared.

I was hooked from the very first pages – the descriptions of Noah and her father, the land and the homesteads but it was what happens to Noah alone near the creek with just the pigs nearby where this book became one I’ll always remember. It’s hard to talk about without spoiling it for those who haven’t read it, but it’s such a heartwrenching scene made all the more so by Noah’s matter of factness about it and her quiet resolution of the situation. I don’t know how a 14yo girl managed to act that way, her upbringing with her father and her now deceased Uncle Nipper seems to have made her more male than female in many ways. However it’s soon obvious that although Noah dealt with this situation, it’s never truly far from her mind, the memory coming up many times throughout the story. Sometimes she seems to think that what she did is the reason things happen later in her life, why she is punished – except the punishment doesn’t happen to her, it happens to the people she loves.

In a way, Foal’s Bread is a very bleak book – the characters often have terrible things happen to them but in that somehow, they keep going, better than they were before. Noah is stronger for what happened to her, better equipped to deal with things later on in her life. Although her and Roley’s marriage has many downs, they do stay true to each other in the best way that they know how and even while they are not happy, trying to find a way back to the heady days in the beginning, they still love each other. Noah at times also has trouble relating to her daughter Lainey and when Lainey successfully wins a high jump, is actually downright cruel to her and even as I really felt for Lainey when this happened, I also applauded Mears for taking the time to flesh out what a really fractious mother/daughter relationship was like. Noah desperately wanted something her whole life and she never got it. When her daughter did, it was almost too much for her to bear and I feel that was very real, very human.

I loved this book – every word of it. It would’ve been a very deserving winner of the Miles Franklin, had it got the nod. The Australian lifestyle, the farming, the travelling to those country show days, the training of horses, trying to get the best price for the milk from the dairy cows, the small towns, the pubs therein…. All showcased fabulously. Foal’s Bread was Gillian Mears’ first novel for something like 16 years – it’s the first I’ve read by her and I know I’ll be trying to collect the rest. I can’t wait to hear her talk now at the MWF and look forward to doing a post on what she has to say.(less)

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Oct 02, 2012 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was not a happy read. I read the boo with an ever increasing sense of doom - expecting that every time I turned the page, disaster would be waiting. And there were plenty of disasters but still the sense of doom did not lift.

Life was tough on the land. Gillian Mears has done a wonderful job of portraying just how tough life was for the Nancarrow family in the years around World War II. She has also given great insight into the importance of the Show, and what an event they were for the comm...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Jaqueline rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loved this Australian novel set in rural northern NSW around the 1930s. Nicely developed interesting characters with their own strengths and weaknesses. Beautifully written.
Essentially a story about 2 generations of a farming family with a strong interest in horses and show jumping, but also a story of love, tragedy, and unfulfilled dreams.
Very realistic and well researched, I can picture the house now - I can imagine a movie being made from this.

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Jan 03, 2013 Michele Davis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I did like this book but not being a horsy person I was sometimes bored with the horse talk. In about the middle I felt it slowed up a bit, and like another reviewer I was keen to finish it and get on to something else. My interest was rekindled towards the end, I felt the story had come full circle. Jacarandas are my favorite trees but the constant reference to it drove me nuts! All in all quite a good read, not the best thing I've read of late though.

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Nov 17, 2012 Elizabeth Adamson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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Sep 23, 2012 Anthea Moffatt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Foals Bread is a fantastic book,the characters and beautifully written narrative draws you in. Mears paints an picture of a period of time which was tough and of people who needed to be even tougher. From the opening chapter you know that Noah's journey is not going to be easy, but it's a journey you want to go on,
I love Mears eloquent use of language, such a talented writer.

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