Belong To Me — Kai Maristed

Her novels, Out After Dark and Fall, have already established Kai Maristed as an original voice, one of clarity and terseness, a muscular language (Los Angeles Times Book Review on Fall). Now, with this splendid collection of nine stories, she displays her mastery of the shorter form.          Horses are not a hobby but an obsession for some people, and these memorable fictions go to the heart of that relationship. Many of the characters here are intimately connected to the world of horses, caring for and riding and learning from them. Ultimately such individuals turn out to be outsiders in the sense that every one of us is: They insist on their own lives, lives that often lead them away from love or the law or common sense. The book opens with a chilling narrative of a young woman's abduction and long-term captivity—perhaps the most disturbing since John Fowles's novel The Collector. Maristed manages even the most disturbing subjects with a sympathetic eye, ear, and heart. Her character's inner lives and the real-world events surrounding them are always written in perfect balance, and she captures the lives of people who are down on their luck, or riding high, without a hint of condescension.         The community in which horses are the bond, drawing together disparate women and men, is fictional territory that she has made her own, in the process bringing it into the larger world.