'Black Beauty is the original tear-jerker': Abby Letteri's world of horses

Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: author of Perfectly Themselves: Horses in the Human World, Abby Letteri.

The book I wish I'd written

Horse by Geraldine Brooks: Brilliant, layered, complex. So accurate about horses in service to human greed and the humans who care for them. Horse is an exceptional example of seeing from the horse’s point of view, and of capturing the embodied relationships and communication that can occur between horses and humans (sometimes). It is tender and honest in these portrayals, and the interwoven storylines of the novel feel at once meticulously researched and utterly effortless. A miracle of a book.

The book everyone should read

Everyone should read the original Black Beauty by Anna Sewell because everyone could do with the jolt of recognition – how we treat others in our service, be they human or other animal. How easy it is to turn away from cruelty and injustice, and how real the suffering. Black Beauty is not only a brilliant story, but was a societal game-changer in its day – no mean feat.

The book I want to be buried with

I recently held in my hands a pristine first edition, with original illustrations, of Black Beauty (published by Jarrold & Sons in 1877). The little novel quickly caught the public’s attention and sparked a revolution: it helped people see animals as sentient beings – with feelings, memories, friendships, and also, rights. Anna Sewell died just five months after its publication, but Black Beauty’s influence has continued to shape and strengthen the animal welfare movement ever since. I’d like to be buried with Black Beauty.

The first book I remember reading by myself

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry. The first book I checked out of a library with my own card, Misty of Chincoteague, taught me many things I still believe to be true about horses. Even though the story is dated, there is a wisdom that spills from its pages – the work of an author whose life was spent keenly observing horses. The wild mare, The Phantom, is captured and lives with a kind human family for a short time, but the children realise she is unhappy and release her back to the wild. The Phantom, writes Marguerite Henry, is just a piece of wind and sky.

The book I wish I'd never read

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Dump all over me if you will. It is beautifully wrought, but do we need to soak ourselves in such misery and self-hatred? We’re far too good at it without this level of instruction.

Fiction or Non-fiction?

Tough choice. I love fiction, but equally non-fiction, especially memoirs by poets, or poems that contains memoir within them, or collections of poems spanned by memoir. I love the attentiveness to detail, the immediacy, the compression, the fragmentation, the internal and external landscapes both forms seek to engage. Also, the element of surprise. A fine collection of essays often traverses similar territory.

The book that haunts me

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. I can remember my parents reading and discussing it when it was first released as a four-part series in The New Yorker magazine in 1965. Later it was assigned as a true crime text in a second year university class; I knew enough to know that I was afraid to read it. I proceeded with great trepidation, and tried to skip past the most violent bits. I didn’t want to carry those images in my head. For me, violence to animals is particularly hard to read, and even more difficult to shake from my thoughts.

The book that made me cry

So many books make me cry. I often re-read (again and again) these beautiful books: Mark Doty’s memoir Heavens Coast (and his many books of poetry). Chloe Dalton’s Raising Hare. Brian Doyle’s One Long River of Song. Joe Hutto’s Touching the Wild. Astonishing. Phillip Levine’s book of poems, What Work Is. And, of course, Black Beauty, the original tear-jerker. I dedicated my book, Perfectly Themselves, to Ginger, the chestnut mare who was Beauty’s best friend. Ginger did the work Sewell wasn’t able to load onto Beauty: she was whipped to death on the street when she stumbled under a heavy load and could no longer get to her feet. I told a friend that I’d made the dedication to Ginger, and brought her to tears.

Best thing about reading

Entering new worlds. Abiding there. Being surprised. Taking the images and feelings forward with me. Also, reading aloud. I miss reading aloud to my daughter (something I haven’t done in over 20 years), so from time to time I pace around the house and read aloud some old favourites, especially anything with a satisfying rhyme scheme ("James James / Morrison Morrison / Weatherby George Dupree / Took great / Care of this Mother, Though he was only three").

Best place to read

Anywhere I can. I don’t really like audio books and I drive a lot, so I read in the ‘in-betweens’, in breaks from attending to life admin, in bed at night, in cafés while waiting for my coffee order (life line). Occasionally on a bench by the Ōtaki river, while my dog fossicks in the tall grass. And then there’s my chair, a small-sized recliner that perfectly fits the curve of my back.

What I'm reading right now

Always at least three books on the go, but Star Gazers by Duncan Sarkies is currently top of the pile. What a hoot, and utterly engaging, but clearly it's more than that – it’s political satire at its finest, an allegory for our time, but with award-winning fleece. Also, The Company of Owls by Polly Barton and Have This Heart by Lawrence Patchett.

Perfectly Themselves: Horses in the Human World by Abby Letteri ($50, Te Herenga Waka University Press) is available to purchase from Unity Books.