{"id":1588464,"date":"2018-08-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/?p=1588464"},"modified":"2020-09-09T20:55:54","modified_gmt":"2020-09-10T00:55:54","slug":"divine-reads-machine-without-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/divine-reads-machine-without-horses\/","title":{"rendered":"DIVINE Reads: Machine Without Horses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Machine Without Horses (a Scottish country dance) from noted Canadian author Helen Humphreys sounded odd when I read the description:\u00a0 \u201cIn Machine Without Horses<\/a>, Helen Humphreys explores the real life and the imagined internal life of the famous and famously private salmon-fly dresser, Megan Boyd, a craftswoman who worked for sixty years out of a bare-bones cottage in a small village in the north of Scotland. Humphreys, both present in the story and its architect reveals with her inimitable style the complicated emotional landscape that can exist under even the most constant surface.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>Salmon fishing is not my forte, and I never expected to like the book.\u00a0 Once I started reading it though, I could not put it down.<\/p>\n

It was so unique in its approach.\u00a0 The first half of the book is told from the author\u2019s perspective as she tries to create a story about Megan Boyd\u2019s life when little or no information exists.\u00a0 It takes the reader through the process of her writing from trying to learn how to dress a salmon fly to imagining what Boyd\u2019s life was like.\u00a0 She struggles to capture what her life may have been like and she tries telling her story from a number of different angles before she is satisfied that she can tell her story in a way that will touch the reader. Her hope is that the reader will see Boyd not just as an oddity, but \u201ca fully realized human being.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The second half of the book concentrates on her subject\u2019s story, although her name has been changed to Ruth to avoid upsetting her friends and relatives.\u00a0 Ruth is eccentric, but kind; lonely, but easily overwhelmed by visitors.\u00a0 She is an anomaly in her small village, shunning the basics that would make her life easier, like electricity, but still finding her own way to fit in.\u00a0 It is in this section of the book that Ruth\/Megan really comes alive as a character, although it is a little disappointing to have the author disappear completely from the story.\u00a0 It would have been a great pay-off to have, at the very least, an Epilogue to complete her tale. \u00a0The story of Ruth, though, is at times amusing, but also heart-breaking.\u00a0 It succeeds in making a simple life more rich and robust.<\/p>\n

It is a beautifully told story from start to finish and one of the most surprising books of the year.\u00a0 It is surprising, not because of any typical suspense tactics<\/a>, but because it is a small story told in a nuanced way that leaves the reader both wanting more, but also satisfied with the way that it ends.<\/p>\n

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Machine Without Horses (a Scottish country dance) from noted Canadian author Helen Humphreys sounded odd when I read the description:\u00a0 \u201cIn Machine Without Horses, Helen Humphreys explores the real life…<\/div>\n
View Post<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1601398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[542,183,182,4710,4709,3768],"powerkit_post_featured":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1588464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reviews","8":"tag-avid-reader","9":"tag-book-reviews","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-helen-humphreys","12":"tag-machine-without-horses","13":"tag-reader"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601400,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588464\/revisions\/1601400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1601398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588464"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=1588464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}