In my long and fruitful career as a lover of young adult fiction, I've had the privilege of reading some masterfully crafted books. Some of them you may already know—"The Giver," "When You Reach Me," "The House of the Scorpion," etc.—but sometimes gemstones fall through the cracks. I am going to exhort you to read one of these hidden gems: "The Scorpio Races" by Maggie Stiefvater.
You may know Maggie Stiefvater for her "Raven Boys" books or her "Shiver" trilogy. As an amateur but deeply impassioned connoisseur of books, I believe that, though obscure, "The Scorpio Races" is Stiefvater's singular, exquisite masterpiece. In the words of the author herself: "The Scorpio Races is the book of my heart." I will do my best to explain why, but even my extensive vocabulary cannot capture my infatuation when it comes to "The Scorpio Races." It is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.
"The Scorpio Races" is set in the fictitious town of Skarmouth, a small and disarming village on the island of Thisby. Life in Thisby is centred around two things: its sea port, and its horses. But these are not ordinary horses—these are the capaill uisce (pronounced kapall ooshka). And the capaill uisce—Gaelic for "water horses"—are wild horses of the ocean, feared for their ferocity, and with a reputation of tearing apart any man foolish enough to treat them like ordinary animals. The capaill uisce are raced by men on the beach of Skarmouth in the Scorpio Races every November.
"What it's like is a battle. A mess of horses and men and blood. The fastest and strongest of what is left from two weeks of preparation on the sand. It's the surf in your face, the deadly magic of November on your skin, the Scorpio drums in the place of your heartbeat. It's speed, if you're lucky. It's life and it's death or it's both, and there's nothing like it.”
Sean Kendrick loves a blazing red capaill uisce stallion, Corr, but as the island's best trainer and rider, he as no allusions about what the capaill uisce are capable of.
I don't often think of my father's body strung out through the reddening surf. Instead, I remember him as he was before the race: afraid.
I won't make the same mistake.
Puck (Kate) Connolly, the owner of an earthbound pony named Dove, has fiery red hair to match her personality.
“My mother always said that I was born out of a bottle of vinegar instead of born from a womb and that she and my father bathed me in sugar for three days to wash it off.I try to behave, but I always go back to the vinegar."
The worlds of Sean and Puck collide as they prepare for the Scorpio Races with everything they hold dear on the line.
I can't really believe that it's over.
"I'll speak for her."
Every face turns to where Sean Kendrick stands a little apart from the crowd, his arms crossed.
"This island runs on courage, not blood," he says. His face is turned towards me, but his eyes are on Eaton and his groups. In the hush after he speaks, I can hear my heart thudding in my ears.
The prose is heart-wrenching, heartwarming, graceful and simple as the reader is drawn in.
"Other people have never been important to me, Kate Connolly. Puck Connolly."
I tip my face up to look at him, finally. The blanket falls off my shoulders, and my hat, too, loosened by the wind. I can't read his expression--his narrowed eyes make it difficult. I say,
"And now?"
Kendrick reaches to turn up the collar on his jacket. He doesn't smile, but he's not as close to frowning as usual.
"Thanks for the cake.”
Stiefvater intertwines the lives of Sean and Puck beautifully and delicately. The pages of The Scorpio Races bleed with the wild spirit that breeds people like Sean and Puck and the capaill uisce they both love and fear.
“There’s no one braver than you on that beach.”
Her voice is dismissive. “That doesn’t matter.”
“It does. I meant what I said at the festival. This island cares nothing for love but it favours the brave.”
Now she looks at me. She’s fierce and red, indestructible and changeable, everything that makes Thisby what it is. She asks, “Do you feel brave?”
The mare goddess had told me to make another wish. It feels thin as a thread to me now, that gift of a wish. I remember the years when it felt like a promise.
“I don’t know what I feel, Puck.”
Puck unfolds her arms just enough to keep her balance as she leans to me, and when we kiss, she closes her eyes.
She draws back and looks into my face. I have not moved, and she barely has, but the world feels strange beneath me.
“Tell me what to wish for,” I say. “Tell me what to ask the sea for.”
“To be happy. Happiness.”
I close my eyes. My mind is full of Corr, of the ocean, of Puck Connolly’s lips on mine.
“I don’t think such a thing is had on Thisby. And if it is, I don’t know how you would keep it.”
Puck—and maybe even the reader—questions how Sean can love such fearsome and otherworldly creatures as the capaill uisce. We are not asked to love the man-eating horses of the sea, but we are asked to feel what it's like to have the surf singing through our veins and the raw, beautiful terribleness of the capaill uisce burned into our hearts.
"Does anyone ask you why you stay, Sean Kendrick?"
"They do."
"And why do you?"
"The sky and the sand and the sea and Corr."
The Scorpio Races is a gorgeous, gorgeous little book—my heart is wrung every time I think about it. Let it take you to the island that runs on courage and bravery, where someone dies every first day of November on the back of a horse as beautiful and dangerous as the ocean it comes from, where promises of the mare goddess are what you make of them, where the people are fierce, indestructible, and changeable.
He is slow, and the sea sings to us both, but he returns to me.
P. S. Stiefvater said that the spirit of wildness and hunger in "The Scorpio Races" is best embodied in the song "An Toll Dubh" by the Scottish folk band, Runrig. And she is 100% right. Give it a listen.
