The Studhorse Man Challenge (closes June 18)

It was quite a while back that I reviewed Robert Kroetsch's The Studhorse Man.  I don't think I did a very good job in conveying why I think this is Kroetsch's best novel.  So I'll give it another shot.

Quite a few of Kroetsch's novels are mid-20th C. postmodern novels, featuring wildly unreliable narrators.  While many pomo novels trace their roots back to Sterne's Tristram Shandy, the more immediate antecedent is probably John Barth or Robert Coover.  Interestingly, all three (Barth, Coover and Kroetsch) sort of came to the same turning point of adopting postmodern conventions in the late 60s.  Maybe it really was just something in the water...

Anyway, Gone Indian and to a lesser extent Badlands have narrators that undercut the main thrust of the story, but The Studhorse Man in the only one where the narrator is actively stalking Hazard Lepage (the main character), intending to do him in if possible, so that he can marry Hazard's fiancee Martha.  Sadly, Martha is the narrator's cousin, and she doesn't really take to this idea.

Kroetsch's novels do have a bit of the manly man about them, maybe just a bit too stereotypically soaked in the rhetoric of how Canadian men tamed the frontier.  Some readers are definitely put off by this, but it does seem most appropriate in this novel, which is essentially the Odyssey on the Canadian frontier, though one might argue that Hazard is trying to return to a simpler time rather than returning home.  Hazard views the mechanization of Canadian farms and the subsequent redundancy of horses in the West as a terrible thing, and he struggles to breed his blue stallion with other worthy mares before it is too late.

The adventures themselves are quite amusing, as Hazard gets himself into one scrape after another.  It is very hard to convey humour in a review, and I suppose you'll just have to trust that it is a funny novel.  But it's still better to go ahead and read it.

As it happens, I have a spare copy to give away (a yellowed but still quite readable copy), so I am going to start a challenge for it.  This book is free to a Canadian address, but unfortunately, due to rising postage I'll have to charge a nominal fee ($3 Can) to US or European addresses.  The challenge will be open for 3 weeks (until June 18), although if I don't get sufficient entries I may choose to extend the challenge for up to another two weeks.

In the comments, tell me your favourite Robert Kroetsch novel (aside from The Studhorse Man) and give one thing you liked about it.  I'll pick my favourite entry and send the book out shortly after that.  (While you should let me know which country you want the book mailed to, it's probably safer not to put your full address in the comment itself, and I'll get it from the winner afterwards.)

Good luck!