The War Horse

http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Horse-Michael-Morpurgo/dp/1405226668

 (Click here then click on look inside)

‘I saw the grey soldiers ahead of us raise their rifles and heard the death rattle of a machine gun’. The war horse is a powerful story told by the author, Michael Morpurgo of the truest of friendships in the worst of the wars; it is an exciting, thrilling adventure that you can’t stop reading.

       The War Horse is about a horse who tells a story of his memories of the 1^st world war. The story starts off like this, ‘my earliest memories are a confusion of hilly fields and dark, damp stables, and rats that scampered along the beams above my head. But I remember well enough the day of the horse sale. The terror of it stayed with me all my life’. This sentence hooks you in straight way because you want to read more. He gets sold to a nasty middle aged man, who is cruel and nasty to him, he took him to the farm in which the man lived. It makes you feel sorry for Joey’s he wasn’t doing anything wrong but he was being treated unfairly. The author builds up sympathy by using similes’ like ‘I struggled out of the net like someone drowning and trying to breathe’.  However the man had a son who’s name was Albert, Albert was very different to his father, and he was kind and caring toward this horse. They started to build a strong relationship over the months he stayed with Albert. Albert came and talked to Joey (Albert called this horse Joey) each and every day, he talked about anything and every thing just to comfort Joey, he taught him how to do some work on the farm and soon enough he was a proper working farm horse on the farm.

       One night Albert’s father came home from work and had some news that there will be a war, a world war and they needed all the horses they could get. Albert’s father really wanted Joey tog and be a war horse, as much as Albert refused, his father said that he had to go and promised Albert with all his heart that Joey will be safe and well looked after. I was very shocked but not very surprised as the title of the book was the ‘War Horse’ so I half expected it.

      Joey’s journey to war was a long one, he walked through deserted lands for days but this was just the beginning. I think that it’s hard to keep the book interesting when it’s on a boring part but Michael Morpurgo did still keep it interesting because things kept happening all the time. Many terrible things happened to Joey in the war, he met several masters and several other horses that comforted him but many sadly lost their lives. He got very ill in many parts of the book, he broke his leg, and he was almost bombed. He got send off to another farm when he was not needed to a little girl called Emily who deeply loved him then he got send back. However on top of all this he had made a very close relation ship with another horse called Top Thorn they stayed side by side for the whole thing, Top Thorn was Joey’s only comfort. The author made it very clear that they were very close by not just saying how Joey felt but also about Top Thorn and this suggested he was important to Joey. However something happened to Top Thorn that made Joey lose every thing and he could not cope. Then Joey found someone very special to him, who I will not say but I will say that it was a very moving moment as it was built up with lots of tension.

      After all that had happened the war eventually came to a surprising halt. I thought it was a bit sudden and I was not expecting it as I was no where near the end of the book. I wondered what else was going to happen. Well I’ll tell you something very sad happened to Joey, he did not die and he did not get hurt. But I’m not going to tell you what happened as you’ll have to read it for yourself. However what did happen was very nerve- racking, it was all building up to one thing. The annoying thing was that the thing that happened only got mentioned in the last sentence. It was building up for about three chapters for just one sentence. Although I was very nervous and it was very moving, it even made me cry!

     I think this book was an amazing book (one of my favourite), it was exciting the whole way through and not at any point was I bored. I would recommend it to anyone who likes exciting stories. It even made me cry at the end as the phrases used were very moving. I would give it a 5 star rating and hope that you read it too.

Authors Note

‘Some in the village, only very few now and fewer as each year goes by, remember Joey as he was. His story is written so that neither he nor those who knew him, nor the war they lived in and died in, will be forgotten’.