Based on the books I’ve read and liked, Librarything suggested that I might like The God of Animals. I’ve just finished and I have to say, I really loathed this book.

It is a well-written, compelling story of a girl growing up on a barely-making-it horse farm in a desert valley. She has no friends and spends all her time at home tied to the work of caring for horses. Her father has great ambitions to attract a better class of people to come to the ranch for show lessons; but when he can barely make ends meet he boards the horses of the well-to-do from the other side of the valley. Alice has unavoidably absorbed her father’s brutal view of the world. When mares are separated from their foals, when wealthy clients are taken advantage of, or beloved horses sold, it’s all “just business”. This grim view of the world, along with themes of abandonment — Alice’s lively sister Nona elopes with a rodeo rider, Alice’s mother leaves them all, even if she’s only retreated to her bedroom — leaves Alice with little choice but to create a more interesting world for herself. A classmate has been found dead in the local canal. In Alice’s fantasy, she and the girl were best friends, and she is now inconsolable, except when she receives attention from a teacher who seemed to have a special connection with the dead Polly. Alice and Mr. Delmar talk every night on the phone. He seems to be the only person in Alice’s world to recognize her as anything but a shallow middle-schooler, and her infatuation with him is the only thing she can cherish as her own.

I appreciated the fact that Kyle understands the depth of knowledge a young girl can have about the world around her. She refuses to play the “isn’t she so sweet” game that some authors indulge in when they portray adolescent girls, instead creating a complex character who is precocious and scheming, and sometimes unlikeable.

So why did I feel like throwing the book across the room if it was well-written and engaging? In Kyle’s created universe, people who appear good on the surface have dark secrets, brutality and self-interest override altruism, there is no such thing as innocence, men always cheat, we destroy what is beautiful and it’s all just human nature. People who finally seem to find some joy in life are punished and the one character who is an idealist, a wealthy girl who is taking lessons at the ranch, is portrayed as unbearably naive. In this world, the only redemption is in leaving; with the understanding that you can never leave behind the truth. And there is a lot of painful truth in this book, but it isn’t a version of the world I’m willing to embrace. I’m sure this book will find its die-hard fans, but I am not one of them.