A review by foggy_rosamund
National Velvet by Enid Bagnold

4.0

What a strange book this is! It feels like Enid Bagnold changed her mind about what kind of book she was writing at least three times during this short novel. Is it a book about racing? about keeping animals? about thwarted ambition? about the press? I don't know, and yet I enjoy every page of this! Written in the early 1930s, the story is about a lower-middle class family living in a small village in the south of England. Velvet, the fourth daughter, is obsessed with horses, and when we begin the novel she is riding an imaginary horse over the hills and back to her house. But as the story progresses, Velvet ends up with not just one horse of her own, but six, and goes on to be the first woman to ride in the Grand National at the age of fourteen. The plot is ridiculous, with raffles, surprise legacies, and suicides, but Bagnold's insightful prose and earthy dialogue roots the book in reality. Though Velvet is one of five siblings, Bagnold manages to give us an impression of everyone in the family, and the butcher shop, details of family life, and arguments between sisters, all feel tangible. Overall, this story has much more depth than many children's or YA novels of the time: attention is given to Velvet's mother, her strength of character and her pathos, and to the details of taking care of a large family in a small house, down to difficulties with flushing the lavatory. The details are very funny and often feel very true to life. This background makes it easier to swallow the frankly ridiculous details surrounding the ways Velvet acquires horses and races them. It's an enjoyable, vivid oddity.