Molly Gloss

This novel is topically so much out of my comfort zone. Nothing about it is what I would normally choose to read. The cover and the title also don't do it justice. This is really not what it seems!
But, I am so glad that I read this book because once again I am proven that sometimes the best things are where we least hope to find them.

The Hearts of Horses is a novel set in the winter of 1917, somewhere in the east of Oregon state. The main character is Martha, a young woman who escaped her abusive family to build herself a name as a "broncobuster". Through her experiences with horses, we get to know several families living in the area, whose horses Martha is training. I am amazed at how touched I was by these people and their struggles, even though this is not a sappy novel by any measure. There is a lot of subtle social commentary here, some big topics such as the effect of WW1 on the people who stayed behind and the myth of the American West.

Molly Gloss is just a master storyteller. The omniscient narrator works so well here and there is a great sense of time and space. Even the parts about horses were not annoying or boring, and I have zero interest in them.… (meer)

I got this collection because I really loved "The Dazzle of Day" and wanted to read more SF written by Molly Gloss. A few of the stories in this book are contemporary realist, but most have some fantastical element to them, and several are straight-up SF.

As with any short story collection, I liked some stories more than others, but everything that made "The Dazzle of Day" great is also in this book: the prose is beautiful, the characters are well-crafted, and every story says what it has to say with feeling and with subtlety.… (meer)