Jinny at Finmory

Finished reading the long awaited addition to the Jinny at Finmory series written by Sian Shipley – what can I say. Wow. I wasn’t disappointed. Sian’s writing beautifully captures the spirit of Patricia Leitch’s Jinny series.

*spoilers*

Set around 2 years after Running Wild, Jinny is now 16 and preparing to sit her standard grades. Still as tempestuous as ever, the book opens with Jinny having a very belligerent interview with a careers advisor who is not remotely impressed with Jinny’s scruffy appearance and dismisses her as uncooperative and rude. 

Only Mr Eccles, her Art Teacher has any time for her and goes to the trouble of securing her an interview with a prestigious art college in London. Jinny is predictably reluctant. If she goes to this art college she’ll have to leave Shantih at Finmory however, she agrees to attend the interview which will take place in August.

In the meantime, Jinny sees an article in a newspaper that gives her tragic news of her previous acquaintance Kat Dalton. She has committed suicide. A distraught Jinny has a revelation about Kat’s relationship with her stepfather Paul. I was very impressed with this chapter as it shows that Sian had the same train of thought about Paul’s abusive relationship with Kat that I had (I wrote about this in a previous post).

Another thread of the story is that the travelling folk are on the moor once again and they have a stallion that is apparently destined to breed with Shantih but Jinny, ever the possessive doesn’t want Shantih to have a foal but it seems that the power of the Red Horse has other ideas. Jinny goes to great lengths to keep Shantih away from the stallion, even boarding her at Miss Tuke’s out of the way.

The ever perfect Petra has her 20th birthday party which turns out to also be her announcing that she is engaged to her long term boyfriend. Jinny is surprised to see her old friend Sue Horton at the party but is so disgusted by how much her friend has changed, she then proceeds to behave outrageously rudely, walking out of the party and getting a bus home with Ken, to whom she pours out all her woes. Is she doing the right thing in keeping Shantih away from the stallion?

Jinny finally realises Shantih’s destiny and allows her to go off and mate with the stallion and having finally done the right thing she seems to calm down and focus towards her interview with the art college.

Jinny, accompanied by Mrs Manders, Petra and a quietly supportive Ken head down to London for Jinny’s interview. The people who interview Jinny seem to be very much her sort of people and at this point in the book I am really rooting for her to decide to go. Following the interview, Ken accompanies her to the National Gallery where she makes a beeline for the Stubbs portrait of WhistleJacket. In front of this magnificent portrait (I have a print of this on my wall), she plucks up the courage to open her standard grade results….she has done better than expected.

Now waiting for the result of her interview. Miss Tuke enters Jinny and Shantih in for a dressage class at Inverberg Show. There she completes a beautiful dressage test and beats her old adversary Claire Burnley. Claire is now engaged to a wussy chinless wonder who she can boss around (haha). In a very comical exchange that made me laugh out loud, Petra’s fiancee manages to impress Jinny by not only recognising that the dressage saddle that Shantih is wearing is a Stubben (lent to her by Miss Tuke) but also putting Claire in her place with a fantastically snide put down 😂

At home, the letter containing the results of Jinny’s interview await her. Was she successful? And if so will she accept the place? 

Follow on books written by authors other than the original can be a bit hit and miss however I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this one. So much so I went straight back to the beginning and started reading it again. Thank you so much for bringing Jinny and Shantih back to us Sian Shipley 😊🥰

On the day before the release of Dream of the Dance by Sian Shipley (on Amazon anyway), which I am so looking forward to reading, I thought I’d share my thoughts on my other all time favourite book, The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans.

*if you have never read this book before and intend to – spoilers!*

I initially read this around the age of 15/16 so it is safe to say my views have changed from when I first read it to now at the age of 44.

Brief synopsis:

Young girl, Grace and horse, Pilgrim get involved in a tragic accident with a truck while out riding. Grace ends up with an amputated leg and Pilgrim ends up traumatised and impossible to manage.

Grace’s mother, Annie is a very determined magazine editor who worries that Grace has become dangerously withdrawn after the accident and fixates upon sorting out Pilgrim as the answer. In her mission she locates a ‘horse whisperer’ , Tom Booker who initially refuses to help so she throws herself on his mercy by driving herself, Grace and Pilgrim all the way from New York State to Montana where he is based.

Under the big skies of Montana, Annie, Grace and Pilgrim begin to flourish and heal. 

Book: 

Annie and Tom begin an affair. Annie wants to leave her husband and stay with Tom, however Tom does not want this, he knows that Annie belongs in the city and he belongs at his ranch and he has been hurt before. He has an ex wife who was from Chicago who couldn’t cope with being in such a remote place.  He clearly doesn’t want to be in that sort of relationship again and he also doesn’t want to see Grace get hurt when she has been through so much already.

Grace finds out about her mother and Tom’s affair during a barn dance held to celebrate her successful ride on Pilgrim. In her rage, she takes Pilgrim out on a mad ride and gets mixed up with a herd of mustangs. She gets thrown and Pilgrim ends up fighting with a mustang stallion. Tom arrives and extricates Pilgrim from the fight, however he then moves towards the mustang stallion and appears to ‘offer himself’ when the stallion rears up in front of him, kicking him in the head and killing him. The book strongly implies that this was suicide as Grace’s POV says that he could easily have moved out of the way as she had seen him do the same when working with Pilgrim many times.

Film:

Stays fairly faithful to the book for the first half. Once in Montana, there is a good bit of frisson between Annie and Tom and they do kiss during a cattle drive and then have a very suggestive slow dance at a barn dance, right in front of Annie’s husband (really?). Robert then has a very frank talk with Annie about her getting her head straight before coming home- saying that she has to decide what she wants. Annie then dithers for a bit before then driving off for home while Tom watches her depart.

Opinion:

As a teenager, when I first watched the film, I was outraged that they changed the ending as I really love the book.  As an adult though, I look at it a bit more objectively. For me, nowadays the film seems like a more sensible ending, in keeping with the characters involved. Tom seems like a sensible and well adjusted guy who I don’t think would suddenly take the opportunity to die over a love affair. Annie, I could believe more, she’s a bit more self-centred and driven.

I largely think that Nicholas Evans’ original storyline was a plot device: both Grace and Pilgrim were traumatised, and then when they were starting to heal they each had to deal with a final trauma to finally fully recover. Grace and Pilgrim’s recoveries had to mirror each other’s.

There has been an addition to the Jinny at Finmory books, released by Jane Badger and written by Sian Shipley. It apparently tells the story of what Jinny does next. I have read some extracts and I am so excited to read it. I have pre-ordered it on kindle so I won’t get it until next week but I will be sure to review. I get the hint that Jinny goes to London and sees the original Stubbs painting of Whistlejacket – I have a framed poster of this one that hangs in my bedroom.

Jump for the Moon is one of my favourites in the series. I think it’s mainly because Jinny has to focus and drive herself to achieve goals rather than just galloping around madly all the time. She grows up a bit.

Underachieving at high school and getting constant detentions, Jinny’s teachers get her to mentor a new girl in the school to try and calm her down a bit. The new girl, Nick is a talented rider who has a brilliant horse who has won a lot of lots of cups but there’s devastating information that she’s holding back from Jinny…

Jinny in turn finds out some devastating information about Shantih’s origins, she is really Wildfire of Talisker and she was stolen from an Arabian stud at the age of 3 and her owner has tracked her down wants to see her.

Can Nick train Jinny and Shantih to win prizes at a major show before her owner comes to reclaim her?

*spoilers*
Jinny’s dad allows Jinny to register Shantih for show jumping provided she works harder at school

Mike helps Jinny with training and even gets enthusiastic enough to get books from the library to help

Jinny totally crushes on Nick’s cousin Richard

Nick’s horse, Brandon gets sold to someone who wants him for his nephew but unfortunately the guy’s nephew, Liam mistreats him.

Jinny completely messes up her first jumping competition at Ardair show by jumping the wrong course and getting disqualified

Liam tries to jump Brandon but due to riding incompetently gets thrown off and breaks his leg. Nick takes Brandon back to his stall and takes care of him.

Jinny and Shantih jump the Topscore competition. This time Jinny has walked the course properly and knows what route they want to jump. They do a blinding course and win the competition.

Shantih’s owner arrives and assures Jinny that she can keep Shantih after being impressed by seeing them jump and assuring herself that Shantih is well looked after and has a partnership with Jinny.

Nick gets to be reunited with Brandon as Liam’s uncle offers her a job.

Ken comes to Finmory after he ends up in probation after being wrongly convicted for a break in to a warehouse. Tom Manders was his probation officer and the family became friends with him when they lived in Stopton, with Ken even turning up on their doorstep with a pony for Jinny to ride.

Ken is mentioned in the first chapter of For Love of a Horse when they are preparing to move to Finmory and Jinny and Mike, while excited about the move, lament that the won’t see him again.

Of course not true, Ken turns up on the second day they are at Finmory, bringing a large grey lurcher dog called Kelly who joined him on his way up north. He is only 17 but his rich parents have washed their hands of him other than sending him a monthly cheque.

Ken at that time would probably have been called a ‘hippy’, as he is very environmentally oriented and vegan. This is more normal now than when these books were originally published in the 1970s.

Ken suggests that Jinny changes Yasmin the Killer horse’s name to Shantih ( it took me many years to realise that Shantih is pronounced Shaan-tee rather than Shan-tie lol 😂).

It is Ken who rescues Jinny when she heads out to the moors to look for Shantih and they get caught in a snowstorm. It is also Ken who gets the vet out for Shantih as she has a bad leg.

I could write more about Ken but I won’t just now but I will finish by saying that as a teenager, I imagined a TV series being made of the Jinny books, I would have casted Paul Nicholls as Ken and Alexander Morton, who played Golly in Monarch of the Glen as Mr MacKenzie.

“Puke and Double Puke”, this is a phrase I have often adopted myself when I encounter something or someone that disgusts me, and it comes from this book series as it’s usually Jinny’s first thought when she meets Clare Burnley.

I have posted about Jinny’s first experience with Clare in a previous post, Jinny developed a sycophantic relationship towards Clare until discovering her deception over Spencer’s theft of the Osprey eggs.

The next encounter is Horse in a Million, a year later where Clare brings her high class horses to an amateur gymkhana that Jinny and Sue organise and wins everything – there is a lot of other drama that follows but I will get into that in another post!

Clare later gets her comeuppance in the Inverberg show as Clare loses the showing class to a friend of Miss Tuke’s and then Jinny on Shantih beats her in the open jumping. Clare is in a total sulk as she’s not used to losing and Jinny returns home to find Ken gesturing towards the sky, the Ospreys have returned.

Clare then returns in the final book, Running Wild. She is back at her house Craigvaar while her dad is leading the contract on building the new road in Inverberg- which will lead to the Wilton Collection being demolished. She has brought a new horse, Gatsby with her along with a groom, Kim. Clare wants to enter a local long distance ride on Gatsby so Jinny also enters with Shantih.

Shantih then gets loose after Jinny doesn’t close the gate to her field properly (idiot!). Shantih arrives at Craigvaar looking for Gatsby, Clare’s groom Kim was going to catch her and put her in a loose box but Clare spitefully chases Shantih back out on to the moors.

Later, Jinny having found Shantih on the moors and saving her from being drowned in a deadly bog (giving me horrible flashbacks from the Neverending Story), finds out about Clare’s attempted sabotage.

At the long distance ride, the weather conditions turn foggy towards the end and Clare takes the wrong path and Jinny accidentally follows her. On hearing a loud crash, Jinny investigates to find that Clare has had a fall and Gatsby, with his legs trapped by tree branches is dangerously kicking out at Clare’s head. Jinny drags Clare out of harms way but realising that Clare has a head injury knows that help is required…

Jinny realises that the path down to the finish line for the long distance ride isn’t far away and she can hear the other horses so she takes Shantih’s tack off and chases her away, knowing that she’ll follow the other horses and people will then come and look for her and Clare. The plan works, Clare is ok and Jinny seems to reach a bit of a truce with Clare.

As Running Wild is the last book in the series I don’t know how Jinny’s relationship with Clare pans out after. I personally would have tried to rescue Clare as well in that situation if I could- I don’t hate anyone enough to let them die, but I still don’t think I would ever be friends with her. She’s too snobby, deceitful and spiteful. I still say “Puke and Double Puke”

We first encounter The Walker in Chestnut Gold. Jinny is already disgruntled. Her friend Sue arrives for a long awaited summer visit after her trip to Greece and Jinny finds that Sue has changed and has become obsessed with makeup. To make matters worse, Jinny’s perfect sister Petra has failed her music exam and decides she wants to join the 2 day trek that Miss Tuke organised for her nephew to film a tv show about horses.

Jinny has nightmares after reading a scary story in a book in Miss Tuke’s attic room, after that she keeps seeing the same dark figure, which freaks her out.

Eventually, after Jinny getting freaked out and running away from the strange man on few occasions, he finally gets to the opportunity to reveal his purpose, he needs her to witness the ‘dance of the golden horses’.

There is a hidden celtic cave where images of golden horses are painted and the light hits them in a certain way at certain times of year that makes them dance.

After the cave is destroyed, thanks to Miss Tuke’s nephew being nosy, The Walker commands Jinny to sketch the golden horses and ride to the Wilton collection museum in Inverberg to paint them on the wall there, using the paints that Keziah gave her.

The next time The Walker appears is the final book, Running Wild. The Wilton collection is due to be demolished due to a new road being built through Inverberg. Jinny tries to protest against the demolition but she is far too late as planning has already been approved and she is still terrified of the Walker so she keeps running away from his attempts to talk to her. All he wants is for Jinny to be there when the museum was destroyed so the Golden Horses could run free. She eventually complies and the Walker hands her a parcel that contains the Epona and Horse God statues.

I think Jinny was right to be scared of the Walker in Chestnut Gold as it was the first time she met him, however once she verified that he meant no harm, after she verified his identity with Jo Wilton, I don’t understand why she was still scared of him when she encountered him again in Running Wild, I thought she was being a bit ridiculous there.

Following The Night of the Red Horse, the supernatural element follows through in the rest of the series. In The Magic Pony, Jinny helps to get an elderly dying tinker (traveller) woman, Keziah discharged from hospital so she can die on the moors with her family in the fresh air as she chooses – and also a couple of other tasks need to be completed before her death….

Shantih at this time is lame after a fall when Jinny was recklessly galloping her over a wall on the moors. Jinny fears that she has broken a bone in her foot and the vet has arranged for Shantih to be boxed down to Glasgow with another horse for an x-ray.

With Keziah successfully discharged from hospital and Jinny at home on her own, she sees the party of tinkers including Keziah approaching Finmory. When they arrive, they proceed up to Jinny’s attic room and Jinny follows them as if in a trance. There is a bowl with special plants burning, and Jinny is handed a paintbrush. With a background of chanting and using special paints, Jinny, still as if in a trance repaints the Red Horse mural on her wall.

Afterward Keziah is exhausted but asks to look at Shantih’s foot, she diagnoses that there is poison in the foot and she knows how to make up a poultice that will draw it out.

A week later, Jinny removes Shantih’s poultice to find that it was a shard of stone that had been driven into the sole of her foot that made her lame (Would the vet not been able to figure that one out? 🤔) and Shantih is now totally sound again. Jinny gallops Shantih up to the bothy where Keziah is staying, just in time to witness her death.

Additional notes:

The other story in this book is that Jinny also rescues an elderly pony, Easter from a run down riding school. The pony ends up being euthanised in the next book (Ride Like the Wind) and her blindness to Easter’s suffering is another Jinny moment that annoys me.

Also in Ride Like the Wind, it is implied that the power of the Red Horse helped Jinny, Shantih and Kat Dalton escape from the rip tide they were being swept away by.

The paints that Jinny used to repaint the Red Horse mural were then given to Jinny after Keziah passed away with the words that she wasn’t to use them but to keep them until ‘an old one came along’. Well….. That’s another story….

An interesting aspect of the Jinny at Finmory books is the supernatural element. Jinny often gets drawn into aspects of Celtic superstitions which leads her to have nightmares and premonitions.

The Night of the Red Horse:

Jinny starts having nightmares following a visit from people doing an archeological dig on a site further up the moors from Finmory, they’re interested in a mural of a red horse on Jinny’s bedroom wall and they want to take a look at it but then dismiss it as being of no interest to them.

The power of the mural is foreshadowed in the first book, For Love of a Horse as Jinny paints a picture of Shantih running free on the moor and pins it up on the wall opposite the mural after seeing her in the circus. The day after this, Shantih escapes from the circus vans after a road accident and runs free on the moors.

The farmer, Mr MacKenzie tells Jinny about how his grandmother used to work at Finmory house and she brought him to watch an old tinker lady (travelling folk) chant whilst a “young lass with red hair” painted the mural- so again we see a foreshadowing that Jinny has a supernatural connection with the mural and the Red horse.

In The Night of the Red Horse, Jinny and her friend Sue visit the dig but Jinny is very unsettled by it and starts having nightmares featuring the Red Horse in the mural in her bedroom.

Her friend Nell who owns a gift shop in Inverberg who sells the Manders pottery along with Jinny paintings takes her to visit the Wilton Collection, which is a small museum of various artefacts including a Celtic statue of the pony goddess Epona. Jinny goes into a trance looking at the statue and utters “not one but One” but she is unable to say when asked what she meant.

Jinny continues to experience nightmares and when her family all leave her own at Finmory on her own for various reasons… Sue comes to stay with her for the night.

Jinny hears Shantih galloping around in her field and goes to see what she is up to but not finding her headcollar on its usual peg she puts her bridle on instead and as if in a dream, jumps onto Shantih’s back and Shantih gallops off across the moor, she obviously knows where she’s going so Jinny doesn’t try to stop her.

Eventually they reach a hollow near to where the archaeological dig has been taking place, however they seem to have gone back in time. They ride up to an alter where two statues are being fired. One is the Epona statue that Jinny saw at the Wilton Collection and the other is of an Arab Stallion. Shantih gallops home and an exhausted Jinny takes her bridle off and collapses into bed. The next morning, Jinny dismisses the whole thing as a dream but then finds some odd smelling leaves in Shantih’s mane.

To conclude this story, Jinny goes back to dig in daytime and Shantih leads her to where the Arab Horse statue is buried and she finds it. She realises that she is not meant to give the statue to the archaeologists but she still continues to have her nightmares. So what IS she meant to do with it? It finally hits her after a disastrous attempt to hide it in an abandoned quarry on the moor. “Not one but ONE”, she’s meant to bring it to the Wilton Collection to reunite it with the Epona statue. If the archaeologists had found that would never have happened. Of course, once she realised this the nightmares stop.

This is an amazingly imaginative story, and I was wowed by it when I first read it but it is possibly a bit scary for more sensitive younger readers.