The scale of hardship, compassion, and betrayal in this book is hard to fathom, and I sat puzzled by the recommended age level of 9-12. The writing is excellent, and though there is a lot of bleakness, there is humour and comfort also. Lawrence claims he might not have written the book if he had known what it would entail similarly, I’m not sure I would have read it if I had known the journey I was on. I won’t ruin the story for those who don’t know the tale of Scott’s voyage – as I didn’t. This book was startling and left me feeling mournful and rather chilly. Lawrence imagined much of this story, but he also stayed true to the facts wherever possible, and obviously immersed himself in the historical record, and the lives of ponies. The novel is told from an overarching historical vantage point, and from the point of view of one of the animals brought by Captain Scott – a plucky, if tired, pony called James Pigg. This is the story of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s epic quest to reach the South Pole – a race against Norwegian Roald Amundsen to traverse the frozen wastes of Antarctica.

But true to form, I had other books on my list, and I put it off. Ī co-worker passed Winter Pony on weeks ago with high praise. I’ve been sitting indoors on comfy furniture reading the extremely evocative new novel by Canadian author, Iain Lawrence. I have shivered through the nights and sweated with back-breaking labour during the days… Well, not really.

While I learened a lot from this book and found the story to be fun, it does not have a happy ending.For days I have been in a land of ice, snow and frozen vistas. If you are sensitive about real accounts of animals and people dying or being shot to death, you may wish to consider researching the non-fiction story and then deciding whether this would be a good book for you. This was written from the point of view of a pony named James Pigg, first from his birth and all the way to his death and the many things that happened to him, primarily in the Arctic wasteland of the most southerly contenent. One man took dogs the other dogs and ponies. This is a novel based on a real event, a particularly disastrous one it is the story of an adventure to the south pole, two teams racing to have the glory of being the first man there. While I really enjoyed the story itself, and found it quite interesting I was not prepared for the amount of death and killing of ponies involved. May contain slight spoilers I probably should have researched this book a bit better before diving in.

The Winter Pony by Iain Lawrence