4: The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

A book by Charlie Mackesy

Charlie Mackesy, the Northumberland-born artist responsible for The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse, has described his book as a “small graphic novel [with] no real narrative”. This statement is accurate. The book is small. There are just 66 leaves encased in the hardback cover, which is adorned with heartfelt praise from such luminaries as Bear Grylls, Richard Curtis, and Miranda Hart. It is definitely graphic, in the sense that it is a picture book, not in the sense that might relate to violence in a Quentin Tarantino film. And as far as it has any narrative, it is about a boy who meets a mole, and then a fox, and then a horse, and they go on a journey to not-quite-sure-where. The End. (Or “look how far we’ve come", as Charlie would have it).

At the risk of being trite, though, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse is a great deal more than that.

It is a beautiful object. The Kindle edition will do it little justice because it is a book which is crying out to be touched and scruffled (I think that’s a made-up word, but hopefully you get what I mean). Its heavyweight pages are textured and tactile and redolent of much older books in library stacks somewhere.

It is a book for everyone. As Mackesy says in his introduction: “Whether you are eighty or eight.” The protagonist, such as there is one, is a young boy, and as a picture book with few words, one’s first impression would be that it’s for children. But it’s not. At least not exclusively. There is something in The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse for everyone regardless of age, creed, race, politics. (And apparently everyone is reading it. Waterstones and Barnes & Noble named it Book of the Year for 2019, it has been on bestseller lists either side of the Atlantic, and translated into 17 languages.)

It is a sublime fusion of pictures and words. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is an oft-trotted-out cliche that Mackesy’s book puts the lie to, despite being dominated by his beautiful pen-and-ink drawings. As a picture book, it does work. If you go through it from cover to cover without reading the words, the narrative is coherent and the images still breathtaking. Similarly, if you only read the words, it’s heartbreaking and heartwarming all at once. (“‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘Kind,’ said the boy.” I’m in pieces!) But Mackesy’s biggest achievement is in combining the two so wonderfully. It's a kind of modern-day alchemy.

Perhaps most importantly, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse is a sanctuary. Its world is devoid of cynicism, if not pain (“The fox is mainly silent and wary because he’s been hurt by life”). Its characters are driven by a desire to be kind—to each other and themselves—and to uplift and understand rather than subdue and ignore.

In his poem Everything is Going to be All Right, Derek Mahon writes: “The sun rises in spite of everything / and the far cities are beautiful and bright.” A glance at any page of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse can serve as a helpful reminder of that.