Jinny at Finmory

I find this book the most difficult in the Jinny at Finmory series to read but because of that it is also one of my favourites.

I mentioned the maturity of themes in these books my last post however this one surpasses itself. It was not my favourite in the series when I read it as a child but reading it as an adult some of the nuances in it chilled me to the bone.

In this book, Jinny is pushed to make friends with Kat Dalton who owns a black thoroughbred called Lightning and she wants someone to accompany her for training over cross country courses. Kat seems overly mature and snobbish despite being the same age as Jinny, yet she is not all she seems. She actually seems a bit terrified of riding despite putting on a front.

Further clouding Jinny’s judgment of Kat is the fact that the Daltons have offered to buy Finmory and what with the Manders’ struggling financially and a job offer for a potential return to being a probation officer in Stopton for Tom Manders, a move back to Stopton is becoming too much of a reality for Jinny.

Jinny and Kat get the opportunity to ride in a cross country competition at a nearby country club. Jinny and Shantih ride the course really well but it’s a windy day and Kat’s horse, and Lightning is freaked out by the wind and acts up, Kat is too nervous to ride her properly and gets thrown off before the first jump. Kat’s stepdad Paul Dalton then gets nasty with her and openly makes fun of her, making Jinny and their instructor Miss Tuke feel very uncomfortable.

Jinny returns home to hear from her family that her dad has phoned from Stopton and he got the job so they’re definitely moving back. Utterly devastated she goes to Shantih and decides to ride her to the beach. When they get to the beach, Kat’s horse Lightning gallops past loose and Jinny has the realisation that Kat has tried to climb the chimney, a dangerous rock at the far end of Finmory bay and without Lightning she has no chance of getting back as the tide is fast coming in. Jinny knows that the only way that Kat can be rescued is if she rides Shantih to her and picks her up. She does so and they nearly get swept away in a dangerous current but they somehow manage to escape and safely reach shore.

Over dry clothes, soup and the Aga back at Finmory, Kat tells her story;

“Helen’s not my mother either, my own mother left when I was about five. I can just remember her. She came back from shopping. She put down her basket, it was a wicker basket, on the table and bent over to kiss me, and went. I can remember the smell of her hair. I guess my father was stuck with me. When I was eight, Helen came. She lived with us, looked after me. It was all right. Then my father got tired of her, went off with someone else. This time it was Helen who was stuck with me. We hate each other, but she can’t help feeling responsible for me. When she hooked up with Paul, she tagged me along too. I was even their bridesmaid. Suited Paul. He likes his victims to be good looking.”

This last sentence utterly chills me to the bone, we’ve already seen emotional abuse that Paul gives Kat but does it go further?

We never find out as Kat doesn’t appear in any other books, Tom Manders returns from Stopton having decided not to take the job after all so the Daltons leave after finding out that Finmory is no longer for sale.

A nice footnote though, a few months later, Kat sends Jinny a picture of Shantih that Jinny had previously sold to her in a nice frame.

Re-reading the Jinny at Finmory books at the ripe old age of 41, I find myself surprised about the maturity of some of the themes addressed in the text considering it’s a series of books seems to have been largely aimed at pre and young teenagers.

There are a lot of nuances in the text that I have only picked up on with re-reading as an adult. The books address issues on how unfairly some people in society are judged and treated via Tom Manders being disillusioned with being a probation officer, which leads him to quit his job and moving the family to Finmory. Ken gets unfairly judged and gets wrongly accused of being involved in a break in, just because of the people he hung out with. His rich parents disowned him at the age of 17, washing their hands of him other than to send him a monthly allowance cheque when he opts to live with the Manders’ – who are all happy to have him.

There are two books I want to go further into that to address these themes, The Summer Riders and Ride Like the Wind. I think I’ll tackle Ride Like the Wind first as this one is quite difficult for me.

Jinny has always been one of my favourite main protagonists in the pony story genre but she does tend to be a bit obsessive, over the top and do some extraordinarily idiotic things at times. In a way I think it’s quite good though because we all do idiotic things at times so it makes her all the more human, however in A Devil to Ride she does act in a way that totally infuriates me.

The storyline is that Jinny becomes obsessed with making friends with Clare Burnley because Clare is experienced with horses, and she hope that Clare will help her with Shantih as she’s pretty much uncontrollable. Clare is a snooty, overbearing stuck up bitch who ignores Jinny until her awful brother Spencer goes away and she offers to help Jinny with Shantih but pretty much uses Jinny as an unpaid groom for her own horses.

The other storyline in this book is that there is a pair of Ospreys nesting on Finmory moors and two guys from the RSPB are staying at Finmory to watch the nest in case of any egg collectors. The Manders family including Jinny are rota’d in to take stints watching the nest during the day.

This is where the despicable part comes in. Jinny, having made a disastrous entry with Shantih at the Inverberg show tells the Burnleys about the Ospreys in an attempt to get them to pay attention to her – Aaaagh!

The next day, Jinny is on nest guarding duty when Clare ‘randomly’ appears with her two horses and lures Jinny away with an invitation to visit a nearby Arab stud (in the Scottish highlands? 🤔). Jinny foolishly abandons the nest hoping to return before Ken arrives to take over. Predictably when she gets back to the hide, the Osprey’s nest has been raided.

Even more predictably, Jinny finds out later that Clare’s horrible brother Spencer is an egg collector and Clare deliberately lured her away so that he could raid the nest.

So yes, Jinny does totally infuriate me in this book, not only is she blinded towards Clare Burnley and her horrible, entitled personality, so much so she stands by and watches Clare bully Shantih, she also acts in a totally selfish and irresponsible way towards the Ospreys, causing their eggs to come to harm. That being said, I guess she did learn a hard lesson in this book.

I didn’t really like the way the RSPB guys left her an envelope with a fragment of Osprey egg shell in it, it seemed a bit petty but I might have felt like doing the same thing in their position.

Petra, Jinny and Mike;

Petra is portrayed as the perfect overachiever who never gets excited about anything whilst diligently practicing her piano music.

Jinny, the over-excitable one who creates a drama about pretty much everything.

Mike, the younger brother who is so chilled out he deserves a medal. He quite often goes along with Jinny’s exploits but is assertive enough to tell her when he has had enough and doesn’t want to get involved.

Jinny is the main protagonist so of course we’re supposed to like her but what about Petra and Mike? Mike is instantly likeable because he is really laid back and just lets all the drama wash over him, he’s the voice of reason without being judgemental.

On the other hand, Petra, Jinny’s older sister gets a bad press as she’s always criticising Jinny. In some ways does she have a point though? Jinny is messy, disorganised and has quite a childish and immature attitude – ok she is a young teenager but she does need a reality check at times. I sometimes feel a bit sorry for Petra as I think she was a bit overlooked. She maybe didn’t want to move to the middle of nowhere and then there’s the time she fails her piano exams and tries to fit in with Jinny and Sue by going on a trekking holiday with them, and Jinny is quite nasty to her about it, although in that I find it a bit hard to believe that Petra can suddenly ride competently having had no real previous experience.

Favourite sibling plotlines:

Mike:

Knows that Jinny had something to do with covering up the theft of the watch in the Summer Riders but doesn’t ask about and just trusts Jinny when she says she will tell him sometime.

Agrees to borrow Jinny’s favourite pony Bramble back from Miss Tuke for him to ride to school instead of the pony he had previously borrowed as they don’t need two ponies as Jinny has Shantih to ride to school

In Jump for the Moon, Mike extensively helps Jinny train for showjumping and borrows books on showjumping to help her build training courses.

Petra:

In Chestnut Gold I hate how she commandeers Jinny’s friend Sue so they can do eye makeup together but if Sue was really interested in hanging around with Jinny that wouldn’t have happened. It seems like Jinny and Sue now have outgrown each other and have different interests. Petra could maybe have been a bit more sensitive about this though.

In Running Wild, Petra is alarmed after seeing Jinny returning home covered in mud after rescuing Shantih from nearly drowning in a bog. After Jinny has washed and rested in bed Petra brings her a tray of food. When Jinny explains to her that Clare Burnley allowed Shantih to run loose on the moor, Petra suggests that Clare Burnley deliberately sabotaged Shantih as she felt threatened.

What do you think about the Finmory siblings?

The Jinny at Finmory series was originally written in the 1970s, it is about a young girl who moves to the Scottish highlands and falls in love with a chestnut Arab mare who is being mistreated in a circus.

It has always been my favourite series out of my childhood pony books. Mainly because Jinny is very hot headed and also a talented artist – which I’m also not too bad at and I would love to try and do some illustrations for the books.

I’ll not say too much about the books at this point as I want to do a dedicated write up of each book in the series. They’ve recently been reprinted so I hope the text hasn’t been changed but I have all the older versions.

I welcome comments from all other Jinny at Finmory fans, I have set up this page for myself and you. Take Joy 😊

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