Novelist and writing guru Courtney Maum takes readers on a candid, deeply moving journey that details how she found her way out of a labyrinth of depression by rekindling her passion for horses.
By her 35th birthday, Maum (Before and After the Book Deal; Costalegre) was a successful novelist, working on
her second book. She was at her happiest--a beloved wife and doting mother of a
beautiful baby girl, Nina. She and her equally creative filmmaker husband had
moved from Brooklyn, N.Y., into a fixer-upper house they bought in the
Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts. But when Nina turned two, something
indefinable manifested in Maum--an
existential crisis. Maum was
deluged with roiling feelings that stalled her writing, plagued her with
insomnia and provoked a general feeling of emotional malaise. A
non-life-threatening car crash sustained with her husband and daughter "was
a match to the depression" that would all-out engulf her. However, the
accident proved a necessary jolt that sent Maum on a journey to reassess her life
and decipher what might bring her a sense of peace and joy, and restore her
equilibrium.
In therapy, Maum mined her past, recognizing how she missed her affinity and fascination for horses, starting when she was a child with a pony, boarded in a barn near her family's Greenwich, Conn., home. Maum's journey of healing and salvation in reconnecting to equine culture is wittily engaging and uncompromisingly forthright. She confronts the past, while also braiding in delightful flourishes regarding the metaphorical meanings of horses and the universal role they have played throughout history and in the arts.
The Year of the Horses: A Memoir by Courtney Maum
Tin House
Books, $27.95 hardcover, 9781953534156, 416 pages
Publication Date: April 19, 2022
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NOTE: This review is a reprint
and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness.
To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (May
3, 2022), link HERE
To read the longer form of this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (March 22, 2022), link HERE