A Horse at Night by Amina Cain
Yep, this was a cover buy. One glance at the Daunt Books Publishing catalogue and I was smitten. But what’s inside? A book on reading and writing. Turns out to be a breath of fresh air.
“Even though I’m a writer, it’s not always language I’m drawn to first.”
Amina Cain’s A Horse at Night is a collection of trim meditations on writing, reading, art, and life. It will help to have read a little Elena Ferrante and/or Sylvia Townsend Warner in advance, but if not, your appetite will be well-stoked by the end. Other writers touched on include Claire Louise-Bennett, Rachel Cusk, Tarjei Vesaas, Italo Calvino, Sigrid Nunez, and Anne Carson.
“In a way, [book titles] are artworks in miniature, like miniature paintings: each conjures something strong, a microcosm I couldn’t have foreseen, but which I immediately want to go into.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking: trim meditations is code for short and quiet. Well, at 132-pages, the book is slender - some essays are less than a page, but these unadorned morsels invite reflection in the reader in a dreamily satisfying way. Which writer wouldn’t be prompted to wonder who or what haunts their own sentences when Cain considers her literary hauntings . . .
“When no one is with you, what do you do, and do you do it differently than if someone was there?”
‘Without planning it,’ Cain begins, ‘I wrote a diary of sorts. Lightly.’ She returns several times to the idea of lightness, parity, and authenticity in writing. Of grazing. Of removing weight. She achieves it here. A Horse at Night is a bloodless diary, full of open skies; it’s an invitation into the thoughts of a novelist wondering what to write next - and how.
She reflects on drawing characters from landscape, on the value of solitude, on portraiture in prose. On toxic female friendships as a literary topic; on the distance between what we believe about ourselves and what we are. She prefers relaxation over conflict on the page, flaws over perfection, the immersion into a fictional world over plot. Cain is figuring herself out.
“But I see now that I hide things in my sentences too.”
I was particularly struck by her comments on the relationship between humans and animals: ‘… animals are seen not as they really are, but as cartoons, toys, pets, and as exhibits at the zoo. Instead of sentient beings with their own desires…’. This has prompted me to consider my own portrayal of animals in children’s writing.
Light and slight, yes, but it was designed that way. I hope Cain finds what’s she looking for.
