‘He was broken, forgotten, and angry. She recognised something of herself in him.’
You could be forgiven for expecting Elvis and Me: How a Musician and a Broken Racehorse Rescued Each Other to be a memoir about a horse. It’s much more.
As someone who couldn’t conceivably be called an animal lover, I thought I might struggle to relate to this journey of equine ownership but the book is quite universal. It’s about owning a horse; it’s about being a woman juggling multiple demands and it’s about the perspective of an accomplished musician.
Brisbane-based Gillian Wills has quite the musical chops. She’s a graduate and Honorary Associate of The Royal Academy of Music for distinguished services to the music profession and former Dean of Music at the Victorian College of the Arts. She first released Elvis and Me (which is partly about the demands of being a music teacher, academic and manager at a leading arts institution) with Finch Publishing in 2014.
Author Gillian Wills. IMAGE: supplied
Following the success of her debut contemporary fiction novel, Big Music (2024), Elvis and Me is now being re-released by Hawkeye Publishing, introducing this remarkable memoir to a new swathe of readers.
Impulsive decision
After a lifetime rich in experience, upheaval, joy and heartbreak and a yearning for horses that persisted since childhood, Wills moved to Queensland to join her artist partner (Mostyn Bramley-Moore) where she made made an impulsive decision to purchase a ragged, ex-racehorse thoroughbred called Elvis.
What followed was a fish-out-of-water experience as Englishwoman Wills attempts to make inroads into Queensland’s equestrian community. The story is uncomfortable and at times overwhelming and utterly relatable to anyone who ever had to learn something entirely new, in full view of others.
While Elvis earns his titular billing (dramatic) in the book, it is Wills who steals the spotlight and our hearts, not only for her starring role in the story but with the way she writes.
Her authorial voice leaps lyrically from the pages. Rich in melodious metaphors and insights into the rarified world of elite music, the reader is treated to analogies between the relationship between owner and horse, a harmony like a musician and their instrument.
‘The handler is the musician and plays the horse. Asking a horse to adopt a consistent pace is comparable to a musician building volume without pushing the tempo; making the horse start a canter on the correct lead leg is like using appropriate fingering to play a treacherous technical passage or achieving precision in placement of a chord,’ writes Wills.
Steep learning curve
The music analogies are just one of many ways Wills helps the reader understand what for some is an unfamiliar landscape. We are invited to ride the learning curve along with the author as she navigates the cliques and rival schools of thought in the equestrian community.
IMAGE of Elvis the retired racehorse and author Gillian Wills supplied by the author
Meanwhile, Elvis shows himself to be the antithesis of the placid beginner’s horse he is touted as by the charlatan seller.
Naysayers
In much the same way as I may slow down to gawk at a car accident, I reveled in the anecdotal horrors (and joys) of horse ownership. As the narrative progressed, however, there was frustration at Gillian’s perseverance and blind commitment to rehabilitating Elvis, as she encountered naysayers whose unsolicited advice ranged from the insensitive to the offensive.
There’s tension over the costs of Elvis’s agistment, feed and medical care, coupled with Will’s departure from lucrative positions lecturing at Griffith University and QUT, towards the financial uncertainty of freelance writing.
Glimpses of England
These passages are deftly interwoven with a patchwork of Wills’ personal history stitched throughout. We meet her eccentric, often dysfunctional parents, Freddy and Aileen, and get tantalising glimpses of post-war England.
These vibrant interludes serve not only to entertain but to help understand the author and her anxieties, blind spots and complexities. It becomes clear that there were parts of Wills that needed soothing and this may have been a factor in her refusal to give up on imperfect Elvis.
Lively scenes
The author’s powers of observation are exceptional. Cameo characters are rendered in Dickensian detail so real you could reach out and touch them and she sets lively scenes, homing in on the remarkable and abandoning the trite or clichéd.
‘Eddies of fruit bats streamed across the darkening sky as the roof of a ramshackle shed creaked and clanged, peeled up and slammed down in the late afternoon breeze, like a pedal drum and snare in a Country and Western song,’ she writes, conjuring a perfect slice of life in semi-rural Queensland.
One of the book’s fascinating observations is that horse ownership is largely the domain of women: perhaps leaving their worries behind and living in the moment with their horse or horses. Elvis and Me shows the reader that a singular focus is required when dealing with horses — both during their care and in recreation — which can provide a much-needed antidote to the constant multi-tasking afflicting many women.
Heartwarming
Ultimately, Elvis and Me encourages readers to trust our instincts and follow our hearts. This heartwarming true story shows how fulfilment and joy don’t always arrive in the ways we imagine, but can be enjoyed at any stage of life, if only we have the courage to seek them.
Gillian Wills will launch Elvis and Me: How a Musician and a Broken Racehorse Rescued Each Other at Books@Stones at 360 Logan Rd, Stones Corner on 13 August.
