Horses - Keith Ridgway

Amongst the folds of tension and intensity that Ridgway builds there is something hiding.

pp. 83

Published: Faber and Faber, 2003 (1997)

You could describe it as a crime thriller, though I can’t imagine a more reductive categorisation. Horses is one of those rare texts that has a taut, compelling plot alongside an enduring literary stance. The plot acts as the foundation upon which Ridgway builds his exploration of the complexities of grief, human relationships and criminality, and he does so with an impressive and shattering insightfulness into humanity.

We enter the narrative after a number of arsons have left an unnamed Irish town in a state of turmoil. The last of these fires has resulted in the death of three horses belonging to Helen Brooks, the daughter of Dr Brooks. The priest, Father Devoy, while offering refuge to the developmentally challenged Mathew, discovers that Mathew knows the identities of the arsonists, and when Mathew turns up later on having been the victim of an attempted murder, it becomes suddenly a matter of vital importance to find the culprit. All of this takes place in the midst of a soul-destroying storm that intensifies even the smallest of actions. 

Probably the highest achievement of Horses is its characterisations. The priest, the doctor and the policeman are fantastically drawn, each tackling their own personal issues surrounding the arsons and the attempted murder of Mathew. The priest suffers quietly with his faltering faith; the doctor maintains his moral certainties in the face of his daughter’s grief; and the policeman tries again and again to reconcile his methodical, investigatory cynicism with the events that unfold right beneath their feet, rendering him helpless. The stretches of dialogue are finely tuned to each character’s personality and state of mind.

But the devastatingly childlike Mathew steals the show. Caught up by chance in a series of events much larger than he is capable of comprehending, he is the novella’s overwhelmingly sympathetic character. Like a child, he is frightened by his central position in the events that unfold. Yet he is infinitely more interesting than we could have imagined, given his intelligence. It is said by a periphery character that, like ‘no other town in Ireland … our village idiot is a genius’, and this is the way Mathew is seen by the townspeople, who feel ‘protective and proud’ when it comes to this young man. He is homeless and he talks to walls, yet the things he talks about are intellectually challenging points of history (‘’It was a good century for the church’ he had been saying, ‘but not a good one for God’’), and Father Devoy ruminates that there is ‘a good mind in there somewhere’.  

Horses is one of those texts whose opening promises so much, and delivers on most of that promise. But it doesn't ever quite seem to reach its true potential. It seems that amongst the folds of tension and intensity that Ridgway builds there is something hiding, something deeper and more vital to the reader. The author never quite manages to locate this vague and indefinable thing, which is a shame. The work is, nevertheless, a strong debut from a skilled writer.