Description

[from review in the Liverpool Daily Post, Tue, Oct 6, 1925)

Mr. Bertram Atkey's "Winnie O'Wynn and the Dark Horses" is the second book of the adventures of his ingratiating little blue-eyed scrap of loveliness. Miss Winnie has a way with her, she has brains, and she has the luck which properly belongs to a heroine of fiction. And whether it tells how she routs the Rajah, or turns the tables on Sir Anderson Roth, or gets the better of Lady Freddy, or wheedles Mr. George H. Jay, or wins Cecil Fairbairn (whom she woos throughout), her story is readable if you have a leisure hour.

Notes

A few months after my screed (on Wolves) about libraries declining to inter-library loan parts of their collection that, despite age and scarcity, have little monetary value and even less readership, a copy of Dark Horses suddenly popped up on eBay. I couldn't press "Buy It Now" fast enough!

Winnie-the-sequel, is still Winnie -- "dazzlingly intelligent" (74) and mercenary where she needs to be, but, as it unfolded in book one, she's also plenty loyal and sticks to her own code of ethics. Dark Horses gives more play to this generous side of Winnie. Atkey's definitely softened her here -- she's found true friends and purpose and this round's more about love of the game (racing) and love itself than the episodic scheming that set her up pretty by the end of book one. Less satisfying from a girl-power perspective, but more affecting from a character one. In Dark Horses, "Best-beloved-in-looking-glass" has been demoted to "faithful-friend" and Winnie's turned her "swift and lucid mind" (190) and "needle-pointed instinct" (192) to racing her little mare Lullaby and raising poor but noble Cecil Fairbairn, on whose family manse she holds second mortage, to a "silver-plated" state wherein he can, with good conscience, take "his swift-witted little champion to his heart, his church, and so to his hearth and home." (132) How she accomplishes this is a fun read -- and would be even more if you understood the horse-racing and odds-laying and betting with which the first half of the book is occupied.

There's still Winnie's strong platonic friendships with the Honourable Gerald Peel (who reads neurodivergent) -- "they chimed together like a pair of specially tuned bells" (16) and Lady May Fasterton (addict of book one, now recovered). There's a surprisingly moving anti-war strain (Cecil is a veteran who champions disarmament), and, as Winnie's story draws to its HEA, there's the pleasure of seeing this brilliant young woman finally unmasking from ingenuousness to her long-time business advisor/muscle (legal and otherwise), Mr. George H. Jay who, though not the most perceptive of men, had begun to suspect as much.

An incident of animal cruelty and the Rajah's character is kind of as you'd expect, but otherwise, as per Post, just light readableness for a leisure hour.

Tags

1910-1919, 1920s, English, Europe, England, I'm not good enough for you, Irish, ambitious, beautiful/handsome, brave, courageous, charming, clever, comedy, competent, determined, efficient, f/m, independent, intelligent, landowner, male, orphaned, political intrigue, politician, poor, principled, prize money, life-changing, rich, romance, saving the family home, single, slight, strong f/f friendship, strong m/f friendship, talented, third-person, veteran, young

Flags

animal cruelty, insensitive racial/ethnic portrayal/stereotyping