I loved this book and sobbed my way through it. I loved it so much that I may not even be able to speak rationally to people who don’t feel the same way, even though, as you can judge by the title, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. As the book opens, our heroine, Penny, is being arrested for reasons not all that clear until her overworked public defender, who has yet to pass the bar exam, arrives to present her with her options. As is common practice, the lawyer advises Penny to settle, but she refuses as she knows she is innocent on what emerges as a murder charge.
The other narrator is the Pony. He doesn’t have a name, though he’s given various names by various owners. He’s guided by hatred and revenge toward Penny, who he feels abandoned him long ago. So whenever he can, he bites or steps on feet, consistently resisting the world of men. He’s like a grumpy old coot who also seems to think very much as we might imagine a pony would think. He can talk to any animal, whatever species, bat, rat, sparrow, goat, dog (he feels dogs are altogether too fond of humans), and the journey he takes to find Penny is a very, very lengthy one.
We are with the Pony as he is part of a birthday party troop, a pony racing group, and a fancy stable where the owners tart him up and try to sell him for lots of money. He travels via truck, boat and even at one point a car, living through hurricanes and cold and periods where – to his horror – he has no carrots. But like a private eye, he’s obsessed with tracking down Penny’s whereabouts, with creatures from sparrows to butterflies giving him clues along the way.
As we go back in time, the reader realizes that the partnership between Penny and the Pony was once nearly perfect, a situation that was never to be repeated for either of them. Although the conclusion of it made Penny sad, in the interim she’s also grown up, gotten married, and become a teacher as well as the mother of a difficult daughter. Further into the story, the Pony eventually realizes not only that Penny probably didn’t abandon him, but she certainly is not a murderer. So his mission changes: save Penny.
While this may sound a bit ridiculous and cutesy, it’s actually a fairly profound and funny look at love, the nature of friendship, and a rather sobering depiction of the way humans treat animals. Each animal from the comfort chicken to Dr. Rat has a distinct personality, and various horses are able to give Pony advice and thoughts on the nature of love, although none of them actually believe in it as a concept.
Meanwhile, Penny’s struggles in jail are another sobering portrayal, this time of the justice system. As she doesn’t have the money to hire the kind of lawyer who might have been able to get her out, she is confused by the process and forced to rely on its slowly turning gears. She only finally meets her actual attorney in the courtroom; the entire time, she still works with her incredibly overworked law student lawyer who does what she can.
I really don’t want to give away any of the many surprises in this book. Even three quarters of the way through, I remained unsure of where things would end up. But the voice of the Pony and the agonies he and Penny go through as they try to find one another are not just funny, they are the through line of a universal story of thwarted love and friendship. This is one of my favorite reads of the year. — Robin Agnew