THE SEA SERPENT OF HORSE

by Susan Trott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 20, 1973

Livvie is Hawaiian and therefore somewhat exotic in the New England community where she's spending the summer with her grandparents, but she's a sensible foil to Horse -- who spends half her time wandering on land with her dog Jim and pet goat Snowflake, and the other half underwater in the ""seaweed city of Brinebottom"" where she rides on the back of her own special serpent. Horse's visits to her dream world (""first the water was emerald green, then it turned pea green, then gold, and finally a pale saffron, orangy-yellow color"") where she joins the half human/half serpent children in an orgy of tickling (not ""the kind of tickling that leaves you weak and hysterical and slightly sick to your stomach. It was joyful and ridiculous. . .they tickled with hands and fins and horns. Those whose bodies were already quite long and serpenty ended up all in a ball, a gigantic serpent ball of wound bodies all laughing"") are marvelously real and sensual. Paradoxically, the ""real"" Horse is somewhat less convincing -- a little too fey in her attachment to Snowflake and too quick to recover from both the fever she catches after running away from home and the delusional world to which she nearly resigns herself. Yet of all fiction's troubled, neglected children, Horse is one of the few with enough imagination to transform their pain and their escapism into a fantasy worth sharing; her nightmare encounter with a giant jellyfish makes analysis superfluous, and even sensible Livvie can almost see the serpent's eyes as he rises from the ocean for Horse's final goodbye.

Pub Date: Sept. 20, 1973

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown--A.M.P.

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1973

Categories: FICTION