Allison at the Allure of Books might as well be my reading soulmate. She has pushed several books on me which wound up being favorites. I knew her for over a year on goodreads, and now she has recently started blogging. She’s awesome and I totally think you should check out her blog. Oh and in non-Unicorn related news, she’s holding a preorder contest for Paranormalcy… Without further ado:
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| The Little White Horse |
When the book opens, the recently orphaned Maria Merryweather is traveling with her governess Miss Heliotrope to live with a relation she has never met at her ancestral home. Also on the journey with them is her dog Wiggins. Wiggins might actually be my favorite character. So much humor was infused into the descriptions of his thoughts and actions; you can’t help but become rather attached to him throughout the story. He is a very beautiful and self-centered dog, who only loves Maria because he knows it is in his best interests to do so (she is the source of food, you see).
As Maria arrives at Moonacre manor and gets to know all the people that are now a part of her life, she realizes that she feels like she has finally come home. Unfortunately, she also discovers that there is a curse hanging over the Merryweathers as well as Moonacre, and as the book progresses, she learns more about the curse and how she can be the one to break it. With a whole lot of resolve and a smidgen of magic, Maria is able to save the manor, bring harmony to the valley, and right some love stories gone wrong (she also manages quite the happy ending for herself, of course).
While an important part of the story, the unicorn is not meant to be a physical part of the story as much as a figurative one. The “little white horse†is more of a background figure threaded heavily in the legends surrounding Moonacre Manor. The book opens with a verse that ends:
The raised hoof, the proud poised head, the flowing mane?
The supreme moment of stillness before the flight, the moment of
farewell, of wordless pleading for remembrance of things lost to
earthly sight.
Then the half-turn under the trees, a motion fluid as the movement of
light on water…
Stay, oh stay in the forest, little white horse!
He is lost and gone and now I do not know if it was a little white
horse that I saw, or only a moonbeam astray in the silver night.
So, even though the unicorn is far more symbolic than literal, he adds a lot of meaning to the narrative. Maria sees him as a source of hope and power. I think he also represents both the happier times before the curse and the resolution of the curse.
Overall, this book definitely celebrates some of the awesomeness that is the unicorn, although I was a little disappointed that there was not a real unicorn frolicking through the fields with Maria throughout the book.
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Wow, I leave the blogging world for a week, and when I come back, your site has COMPLETELY changed! Love the new look!
Anyhow, I ADORE this booik, and I am glad that you have now discovered it as well. 🙂
I discovered the miniseries and the novie well before I realized that it was a book. I have to say that I liked the movie better than the book because, you're right, there was really no action in the book and there was in the movie.
I think that the book doesn't really translate to today's times. Plus, the overly religiousness of it made me almost not like the book.
Still, I did enjoy the book.
I've had this on my shelf ever since I heard the JK Rowling quote. Now, I need to get reading…
Ooh! I've never heard of this one, but who doesn't love unicorns? They're in the same category as mermaids for me! Thanks for the honest review!
Great review Allison! 🙂
(PS. I'm still Team Zombie though.)