Engaging and well written. A recommended purchase for collections where memoirs and adult horse stories are popular.

Courtney Maum is experiencing apathy towards her life and her family; her physical health is faltering with seemingly no answer to her problems in sight. Maum has a chance encounter at a birthday party that ultimately leads her to a barn and reigniting her love of horses, something she abandoned as a child due to family circumstance.

This memoir explores the circuitous nature of life. How paths we take can come back around. How divorce and childhood experience/trauma has an impact on our physical being. How Maum was able to ride horses again and learn a new to her skill - polo. The best part, she's not great at polo, just like a lot of us aren't necessarily great at life, put we keep on walking down the path.

Highly recommend. Fantastic writing.

Discussed on Episode 155 of the Book Cougars podcast.
https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/2022/episode155

Hello All:

Read my review of this work here:

https://greatbutunknownperformances.wordpress.com/2022/05/20/the-year-of-the-horses-a-memoir-by-courtney-maum/

Thank you!

The synopsis of this memoir sounded so great, but unfortunately I could never get into the writing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free e-copy.

I saw this book and by looking at the title and cover I decided that I needed to read this. I didn’t expect this to speak to me the way it did.
I may not be 34 like our author but reading her life was like opening up my head and remembering all those same instances. This books helps put into words just how healing horses are and no matter how long you’ve been out of the saddle it will always call out to you to come back.
If anyone is dealing with depression and doesn’t know what steps to take this book, without meaning to, lays out very simple steps to start your healing process.
I got this book as an ARC but I’m definitely going to buy a copy because everyone needs reminders very now and then about how you can always overcome anything in life.

An unusual and beautifully resonant memoir. Maum loved horses as a child but stopped riding at nine as her parents' marriage imploded. At 37, she found herself at loose ends, depressed despite the positives in her life. Horses saved her. Riding lessons brought her back to that calm and positive place. Well, calm until she discovers polo. This is filled with small insights into horses, polo. and other things. Horses won't work for everyone (and admittedly, it's expensive, very expensive) but they're a bit of light in the dark. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

I loved this book, and as someone who rode when I was a teen, I came back to it in my late 30's, bought a horse at 40, and learned dressage, because I thought it was safer than jumping. Turns out you can fall just as hard on the flat. I also took a couple of polo lessons, but as a left-hander, I gave up. The writing is great, I liked the author's honesty, and enjoyed the hours I spent with her telling her story.

I received an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.

Courtney Maum's memoir <i>The Year of the Horses</i> is honest, raw, and heartfelt. She details a childhood fraught with emotionally distanced parents amid a highly-privileged lifestyle and then marriage and anxiety-filled motherhood, threading throughout the role--and the absence--of horses through the years. This culminates in her recent healing through her rediscovery of equines.

I'm almost the same age as her, so we're the same generation. When she had a whole chapter centered around the trauma of The NeverEnding Story, oh yeah, I got that. I felt much more distanced from the high privilege of her youth--she might as well have lived on a different planet from me in some regards. However, as someone who was a horse-crazy girl who has anxiety and depression, I felt like we had more in common than not. It's a powerful book that is not about easy answers, but about works-in-progress and struggling to accept that.

The theme of this book - a busy mom desperately searching for something just for herself- resonated with me. After years of caregiving to everyone else, I, too, am looking for something that speaks to MY soul. The author kept things real with no "sugar-coating" about the hard parts of life. The only reason I probably won't purchase this book for my library is because I am a high-school librarian. I hardly think teenagers are ready to hear about this phase of life! Truly enjoyable book, though, and I will definitely recommend it to my friends.

A great book for all horse lovers and a treasure for those with an interest in polo, Connecticut and self discovery at any age. A middle aged lady writer's return to her early riding roots leads her beyond basic back in the saddle walk-trot-canter endlessly around an arena or an occasional trail ride but headlong into polo boot camp where she's fortunate enough to learn from and rub elbows with some of the best in polo - both horse and human. A wonderful polo primer for those not familiar with the rules and a rare and beautifully written look into that particular corner of the barn. The treatment of the tragic polo barn fire in Connecticut was personal, poignant and profound.

Sometimes a book finds you and at a time when you most need it. Such was the case when I came across Courtney Maum’s The Year of the Horses. I’m a crazy horse woman and the cover and title immediately screamed “read me”. But it was so much more than that.

The Year of the Horses: A Memoir is Maum’s story of finding her way out of depression by revisiting her childhood love of horses and riding. Maum explores the powerful way horses can heal and have for many.

I devoured this and could not get enough of Maum’s talent of storytelling, her prose and honest words. Reading Maum’s words was a cathartic experience, she was putting my feelings onto paper that I have had a hard time defining myself: “For so long, I had been thinking of my child as a worthy time commitment that nevertheless ate into my time. How and when I wrote, socialized, traveled; it all depended on what was happening with my daughter. But I was slowly realizing that I could incorporate my child inside my joys, that if I showed her how to participate in the things I cared about, she might care about them too.” Her reflections on the roles of being a wife and a mother are raw and honest.

From Lisa Frank trapper keepers to Blue Hors Matiné to the political climate in the Trump era to “shoulders like a Queen, hips like a whore” during riding lessons... I felt a kinship with a woman I’ve never met. This is an honest and moving memoir that will resonate with women, mothers, and animal lovers.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for approving my ARC request.