Books are often sold with “If you’re a fan of X, you’ll love Y” pitches, but I’ve seldom encountered one that was more clearly a “If you’re a fan of” book than “Pony Confidential.”
‘Pony Confidential’ is ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’ with a horse instead of an octopus
Fiction: The novel is narrated by a pony, trying to reunite with a beloved former owner.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
November 5, 2024 at 3:00PM
It’s “Remarkably Bright Creatures” fans that “Pony Confidential” may appeal to. Instead of an octopus who observes and comments knowingly on the foibles of the humans in its orbit, “Pony Confidential” features a pony who observes and comments knowingly on the foibles of the humans in its orbit. Like “Bright Creatures,” “Pony” is a breeze to read, with speedy prose and characters who aren’t hugely nuanced but are easy to root for.
The pony has no name but let’s call him Odysseus, since “Pony Confidential” is a take on the “Odyssey,” in which Odysseus strives mightily to return home to wife Penelope. Here, the beloved is Penny, who owned Odysseus when she was a child but, after being separated from him under mysterious and violent circumstances, has not seen him in decades. Both Odysseus and Penny believe they were abandoned by the other but, over the course of the pony’s journey, we learn something awful happened that neither of them was aware of.
As Odysseus shifts from one adventure (and one owner) to the next, it becomes clear “Pony Confidential” also is a take on “David Copperfield,” which is specifically referenced a couple times, as is Barbara Kingsolver’s contemporary take on “Copperfield,” “Demon Copperhead.”
It’s a lot, honestly, but the good news is you can enjoy “Pony Confidential” even if you’re unfamiliar with those classics. The voice of the pony is so snarkily relatable and in chapters narrated by Penny after she is wrongly accused of murder and imprisoned, Penny is in such dire straits that you long for her to be freed so she can escape to a meadow somewhere and feed Odysseus some oats. In particular, Penny’s questions about being a mom — she has a daughter who is neurodivergent — ring true.
The title character in “Pony Confidential” is more of a wise guy than the sweet octopus in “Bright Creatures,” which works in writer Christina Lynch’s favor. It never rang true for me that the octopus was so interested in the love lives of the humans around him — surely an animal would care more where his next shrimp is coming from than whom some stranger is hooking up with? — and it seems like that bugged Lynch, too.
In a conversation between Odysseus and a helpful pigeon (the animals all speak the same language in this book), Odysseus cracks, “I thought for a second you actually gave a crap about some human ‘love’ story.” The pony’s heart grows a couple sizes over the course of the novel but, mostly, he learns that a good way to get treats is to pretend he cares about the humans around him.
Like “Bright Creatures,” “Pony” is interested in humans’ relationships with other species and what those relationships reveal about us. And, like “Bright Creatures,” “Pony” concludes that, on occasion, we can be remarkably bright.
Pony Confidential
By: Christina Lynch.
Publisher: Berkley, 370 pages, $28.
St. Paul writer Kao Kalia Yang has won four Minnesota Book Awards and was recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts.
