Hello, Horse - by Richard Kelly Kemick (Paperback)

About the Book

"Taut, stylish stories take on big moral questions from surprising perspectives. A teenager's job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers set out in search of fame upon the frozen waters of a subarctic lake. After her mother's death, a high school student tries to make rent by winning the Unitarian Church's Annual Young Writer's Short Story Competition. An incarcerated man considers the nature of justice between shifts with his fellow inmates at Nations at War, the ultimate live-action experience for tourists eager to learn about the Canadian Civil War. Spanning states and provinces, and featuring an apocalypse, a coterie of ghosts, nuns on ice, and an above-average number of dogs, the stories in Hello, Horse consider the mirage of authenticity and the impact of decisions we make -- for better and for worse."--

Book Synopsis

Taut, stylish stories take on big moral questions from surprising perspectives.

A teenager's job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers set out in search of fame upon the frozen waters of a subarctic lake. After her mother's death, a high school student tries to make rent by winning the Unitarian Church's Annual Young Writer's Short Story Competition. An incarcerated man considers the nature of justice between shifts with his fellow inmates at Nations at War, the ultimate live-action experience for tourists eager to learn about the Canadian Civil War.

Spanning states and provinces, and featuring an apocalypse, a coterie of ghosts, nuns on ice, and an above-average number of dogs, the stories in Hello, Horse consider the mirage of authenticity and the impact of decisions we make--for better and for worse.

Review Quotes

Praise for Hello, Horse

"The animal world interacts with the human one in confounding and sometimes wondrous ways in Kemick's first collection, which abounds with the poet's sideways, observational writing."
--Globe and Mail

"Innovative is the joy that Kemick seems to take in juxtaposing the grotesque with the comical. Consider a father whose limb gets amputated by a rock saw with a blade so hot that it instantly cauterizes the wound. 'An arm's lopped onto the dirt and the shoulder socket's a dead-end," Kemick gleefully describes, quickly adding the macabre remark that "everything had been burned closed and probably smelled like hamburger'. . . Kemick's unique voice shines with these moments of tonal whiplash. By using dark humour to sharpen the impact of otherwise grim scenarios, he traverses the extremes of slapstick comedy and gory tragedy."
--Literary Review of Canada

"The tales here mix whimsy, weirdness, lust, and Canadian politics, bringing to mind George Saunders and the slackers from Wayne's World . . . He has a penchant for alternating between things familiar and bizarre . . . Provocative, entertaining short fiction."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Throughout the book is a masterful tension in the idea that reality is always already stranger than it seems. From talking dogs to brutal, cross-checking nuns, Hello, Horse is smart writing."
--Alberta Views

"Restless, exuberant, meandering, funny, inventive, and really quite bonkers . . . Either Kemick is one of those rare, savant-like authors whose outpouring is naturally (and enviably) stylish, or he tempers what seems to be a natural, baroque extravagance with careful, word-by-word revision. Whatever the case, readers will notice--and ought to appreciate--those sentences . . . All in all, Hello, Horse gallops and canters, dazzles and makes a splash. Prepare to be wowed."
--The Miramichi Reader

"Overall, Kemick has balanced visually rich absurdity . . . and the general malaise of youth with admirable, poetic flair. This is an unapologetically unique slice of Canadiana."
--The BC Review

"Rollicking and acrobatic, guffaw-inducing, a bit excessive, and an Exhibit A of the natural born writer. What's not to love?"
--Brett Josef Grubisic, The BC Review

"[Richard Kelly Kemick's] a mad genius. The stories are based on wacky premises . . . yet they are gorgeously rendered and surprisingly poignant."
--Caroline Adderson, Scout Book Club

"The year 2024 has Richard Kelly Kemick, whose wild imagination and fresh insights cast a spell in Hello, Horse; every entrancing story casts off in a different direction, with a genuine 'wait? what?!' moment you did not see coming."
--Susan Grimbly, Zed: Zoomer Book Club

"Richard Kelly Kemick's Hello, Horse is wildly original and filled with astonishing moments. A wonderful collection that resonates long after reading."
--Don Gillmor, author of Breaking and Entering

"Hello, Horse is beguiling and wondrous, with talking dogs and nuns at the end of the world, images that linger with strange pleasure; Richard Kelly Kemick is a stellar wordsmith."
--Mark Anthony Jarman, author of Burn Man

Praise for Richard Kelly Kemick

"Kemick convincingly wrests the sublime from the trivial. He manages, astonishingly, a tone both earnest and ironic, with details and insights that are lively, unexpected, funny, and poignant."
--National Magazine Awards

"Richard Kemick spends a summer in Alberta's Bible Belt where it may be easier to find God than a vegetarian meal. There, he confronts age-old questions about belief with near-miraculous freshness, honesty, and humour. A deeply personal investigation of the blurred border between faith and imagination."
--Marcello Di Cintio, author of Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers

"Laugh out loud funny . . . Kemick's own faith or lack thereof is . . . one of the deeper themes that courses beneath the comedy."
--Calgary Herald

"Wisecracking, earnest, and charmingly obsessive, Kemick introduces himself here as a poet who believes in something larger than his own self, and so is a poet to watch."
--Nick Thran

About the Author

Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan. Richard is also the author of I Am Herod (also on audiobook), which takes readers undercover at one of the world's largest religious events, and Caribou Run, a collection of poetry. He is the recipient of multiple awards including two National Magazine Awards and the Writers' Guild of Alberta's 2019 Award for Best Short Story. He lives in Rossland, British Columbia.