The story of a boy whose mother is an actress trying to make a comeback, after a series of crappy relationships and her most famous films are starting to fade into history. In the past, she’s shunted her son off to his Grandparents in Ohio to be raised when things get difficult, so he really longs to be close to her but their strained relationship and upbringing has left him socially awkward. It all changes when his mother meets Ben, who is funny, kind and handsome, and for a time our narrator starts to find his voice and confidence. And then, he finds Ben dead, with a gunshot wound to the head.
There Must Be A Pony was published in 1971, and was written by James Kirkwood, who was the son of two actors, James Kirkwood Sr and Lila Lee, and went on to win a Tony, a Pulltizer Prize for Drama and the Drama Desk Award for A Chorus Line, which was a huge Broadway hit. This book was adapted into a TV movie, which I couldn’t find to watch anywhere, starring Liz Taylor and Robert Wagner. The book is semi-autobiographical and the authors debut novel.
This was a book that just caught my eye for it’s silver cover and title. I was curious about it’s Hollywood themes and it was $1 in the library book sale. Since I picked it up, I’ve seen a few copies of it around. I think it was pretty popular. It came out at a time just before the real wave of the creation of YA books kicked in later in the 70’s, but it really does read like dark YA, some of the themes are a bit more complex and adult though. Some editions of the cover have that later style of the YA message type books.
In this book, the narrator is 16, and coming of age when all of this happens. The story takes us a little into the history of his father being out of the picture and a series of men coming through his mother’s life. The author was gay, and the book has some sub text to hint that our narrator is too, though it’s subtle in a way. For this reason, apparently, this book was sometimes banned in the UK, though I only saw that mentioned anecdotally, I couldn’t find anything that fact checked that. We learn that he behaves in ways that are socially awkward and at odds with himself, and a lot of his mother’s boyfriends don’t like him because he’s effeminate, so to speak, and she sometimes rejects him because of that. Ben, however, accepts that he is who he is and likes to talk to him about life and things, showing him how to inhabit and accept himself, meaning he starts to gain confidence and presence. It’s a huge change for him and they start to form a family, with his mother drawing closer to him as well. Which makes it all the more tragic when he finds this father figure and mentor dead.
The book then is about two things. It’s about grief, which it deals with nuance, and it’s also about the scandal that the death causes and what comes to light. And this is maybe what made the book popular and got it adapted into a film. The book is based on real events. When he was a teenager, there was a huge public scandal when his mother’s lover was found dead, and he was the one to find him. There was a lot of things around the case that made it very intriguing to the public: there was no suicide note so the former actress, his mother, was for a time suspected of killing Ben, who turned out to be very much still married. Later, James himself would find the note. All of that story is here in this book, and it’s salacious enough reading.
But the real meat in this book is the narrator coming to terms with grief, because he loses not only the only father he had, bu also the growing closeness with his mother, and the future family happiness they were going to have had. He also loses his innocence, when he finds the body and has to go through all the press and police investigation, and general curiosity. It’s a sad coming of age, really. The book is really capable at grappling with the human parts of grief. Sometimes the people in the story find themselves laughing or finding moments of levity, even while further tragedy unfolds, which is so real and so human. For a long time, he is angry at Ben until at some point he realises that he’s trying so hard to hate him so that it doesn’t hurt so much. He also finds himself surprisingly capable and calm, surprising those around him who expect him to be afraid or falling apart, and yet this event will have a lasting traumatic impact on him in other ways. And also, he finds himself getting positive attention and curiosity at school, and the book shows how sometimes kids find tragedy dramatic or romantic. He’s soon quite popular, which is an unexpected side effect. I liked how nuanced that was, probably because he was writing about what he knows, rather than just focusing on the drama inherent in the situation itself.
I didn’t know James Kirkwood’s personal story or about this scandal when I started reading this, so for me the book had mystery element that was quite good. Was Ben maybe murdered? Or did his past catch up with him? Why was there no note and what were his secrets? The way that the note was eventually found really happened, and I was left after this book wondering about how all the pieces fit together. It stayed with me a bit and I was more moved than I expected to be by the whole thing.
James Kirkwood died in 1989 from AIDS related complications, and that made me sad. The title comes from the story that two kids wake up to find their dad has filled the room with horse manure. One is defeated by this but the other is gleefully shoveling because he says, if there’s horse manure, there must be a pony in there somewhere. This is something the narrator is told by Ben but I think it’s an idea that Kirkwood maybe carried with him, and I hope that in his life he did find the pony.
Read It If: you like tight prose, old Hollywood stories or emotionally intelligent writing.
For a book with a death in it and discussion of mental health, it’s not depressing or dark. If it sounds interesting to you, hopefully you can find a copy and give it a read. Or if you have read it, what are your thoughts?
