Book Review of "Rough Magic" by Lara Prior Palmer

This is an autobiographical adventure story by a young author brave enough to question the cornerstone of modern morality. Everything in the modern world, not just the modern “Western World” but the whole modern world, is founded on ambition. We are educated toward realising our ambitions; our families are both part of our ambitions and a support mechanism for the essential business of ambition-realisation; we are deviant if we measure success in any way other than the realisation of ambitions. For the moment, we are sometimes allowed to hold ambitions which are not hurtful to our fellow-man, perhaps even ones that help him, but even that, in the current model of morality, serves to beautify the single-minded pursuit of ambitions. Lara Prior Palmer shows us that ambitions are not an undiluted virtue and that unbridled ambition ought not to allow one to win a horse race, especially not the “World’s Wildest Horse Race”, the Mongol Derby.

At age nineteen, having failed to get into Oxford University, the author decides, on something a bit less decisive than a whim, to raise money and take part in the Mongol Derby, after applications to take part had officially closed. This leaves her with no time to carry out the essential preparations, or even discover basic facts about Mongolia or the race. Her account is sprinkled with all the facts and small gems of Mongolian literature, philosophy and folklore which she didn’t know at the time and found out about as she went along or afterwards -and this enriches the book because it immerses the reader in the author’s learning experience rather than grandly impressing the author’s knowledge upon us. After the pre-race briefing, where the author learns the rules and even the basic structure of the race for the first time (to the disbelief and derision of officials and other riders), a well-supported young, female Texan rider makes an ambitious prediction of her own performance, which sets the author against her. The author is not, initially, seen as having any chance at all of winning, nor, of course, does she harbour any such ambition.

But, not having learnt anything beforehand, and finding that attempts by the communist regime in Mongolia to impose the modern world on the country have had very little impact in the countryside, the author learns the ropes as she goes along, rides what she is given without over-stressing any of her mounts (there are heart-rate checks after each leg) and eventually discovers that she is now seen as a potential winner. Despite a considerable language barrier, she accepts the advice of Mongolian herdsmen when other riders are trying to impose their will on the Mongolians. Sometimes this does not work well, but most of the time it works well enough.

An enjoyable book, and frequently thought-provoking, too.

Rough Magic is published by Penguin Random House UK 6^th of June 2019 & 23rd of November 2020