A review by bjr2022
Falling from Horses by Molly Gloss

3.0

This book is told more than finely written: Many chapters are told first person by the protagonist, Bud Frazer, a rancher turned stunt rider in the movies in the 1930s. And even the interspersed third-person sections have a meandering "telling a story" feel.

I've never really thought about old Western movies, but after reading Falling from Horses (an Advanced Reading Copy), I never want to watch a Western of any era again. The violence against horses is hard on the stomach. There is violence against people as well, but the people chose to participate in it; the horses did not. And the book is, in many ways, about the commonplace violence that is often a part of living. Author Molly Gloss says it a lot better than I can (from chapter 33):

. . . I always seem to be looking at the hard knot that is our myth of the cowboy West: the violence on the movie screen and behind it and the way the humanity has been hollowed out of our movie heroes and villains, the poverty, isolation, and precariousness of ranch work, the dignity and joy of it, and the necessary cruelty. At the start I thought that if I could get everything right, people would see where the cowboy stories went wrong, what we have missed or lost, and they might see that the cowboy life doesn't have to be so goddamn brave and bloody and lonesome as the movies make it out to be. But I have learned over the years that all I can do is reach for something difficult--try to get the colors right and the negative space, the angle of the light. And if a few people can see it, that has to be enough.

I can see it, Ms. Gloss. I'm glad I read this, but it was tough on the emotions.