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asthornton 's review for:
Black Beauty
by Anna Sewell
Okay the title of this blog post actually has nothing to do with the review, but I thought it might encourage you to read it. Did it work? Anyway, let me tell you how to turn me off from a book: Call it "Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse." I can't even type that without laughing out loud because it sounds so dorky. I really had zero interest in reading this book, because a) I'm not a huge horse person (they scare me, and vet school was enough torture thank you very much), and b) I don't really like books narrated by animals. Buuuttt I've been trying to get through all my children's classics, and this one came highly recommended by some friends, so I decided to listen to the audiobook.Why I Enjoyed Black Beauty:
1. The excitement of reading a well-loved classic for the first time cannot be underestimated. Not only is it fun to finally be able to say you've read the book, too, but it's also fun to uncover all these things people have known all along. In this book, the biggest surprise for me was finding out that Black Beauty was a boy. I mean, what? Who names their male horse Black Beauty? But whatever, I guess that's beside the point. Most of you out there already knew this fact. I found it mind-blowing.
2. In all seriousness, this book was written with an unexpected sophistication. I thought reading a book from a horse's perspective was going to be the dumbest thing I've ever done in my entire life (LOLZ, dramatic much?), but Sewell did an excellent job. From the very first sentence, you're seeing world from the eyes of a gentle creature, and it's beautiful.
3. The narrator of the audiobook, Ralph Cosham, was fantastic! He really classed the whole story up, too. Perhaps it is thanks to him that I enjoyed this story so much. I would encourage you to consider listening to the audiobook narrated by him if you haven't yet.
4. The anthropomorphizer in me appreciated Sewell's observations. Seriously as a vet I feel like half of my job is trying to envision and assume what an animal is feeling. How else can I convey the importance of diagnostics and specific care without explaining to owners that this is painful, this is scary, etc. Sewell did such a believable job with that in horses. It actually made me appreciate their role in our life even more.
I encourage any animal person to consider reading this novel if you haven't yet. It's definitely a lot more poignant and sophisticated than you would expect!
