Riders by Jilly Cooper - prequel to Rivals

[RedRobyn2021]

Decided to start listening to Riders by Jilly Cooper after watching Rivals

Quite shocked it's been written by a woman, the women are objectified, the men are rapey

Is it just me? Have you read it?

I looked it up and apparently Jilly Cooper wrote it in 1970, does this go some way to explaining why it's written like this?

I'm preserving with it, I'm on Chapter 13 but I think Rupert is a repulsive creep and can't understand why everyone is so obsessed with him

There are always things you look back on and think is that how people thought and felt at the time. We will be judged in the future as philistines too. Someone born in 1989 will be 35 now, so it really is generations ago.

I didn't read the books when I was younger, so never fell in love with any of the characters. I did get the total ick watching the series as I don't want Rupert amd Taggie to end up together, it's grim! But of its time, so I am sure I would have felt differently if we were watching the series in the 80's. Plus I loved Buffy and Angel was 200 years older than her.

Yeah agree @RedRobyn2021 I absolutely loathed Rupert in Riders and could not understand why everyone was dropping their knickers for him. He's a much more sympathetic character in Rivals it works much better

Ah, thanks! I was in my 20s in the 80s!

interesting discussion, I agree 🙂

I totally agree. I’m 58 - all of Jilly Cooper’s books resonated with me and I adored them. Still do, as a period piece.
I find it exceptionally tiresome that people with roughly 30 years less life experience than me, feel that they can tell me how I should feel about books written in the eighties.

Working in an office in London in the 1980s:

My boss (50s) used to run his hand up and down my leg when I leaned over his desk while he explained something.

My colleague (mid 30s) used to sniff my seat.

The 30something men all called me “Miss Tucker.” This wasn’t my name. Found out later it was because “we all want to fuck her.”

We used to lock the office on Friday at midday and go to the pub.

Titty calendars were in most offices.

A 50something colleague seriously sexually assaulted me when we were on our own in the office. I complained to my boss and was called “a wicked girl” for “saying such things about a lovely family man.”

Shagging in the office was commonplace.

I was 20.

@KittytheHare

No one is telling you how to feel

I'm sharing how I feel and asking what others think

I tried reading Riders recently and lost interest pretty quickly. By the sounds of it I’m glad I avoided the rape scene.

A question for those of you who were adults at the time - were competitive showjumpers really massive celebrities back then or is that a weird fiction for the book? I found it really quite difficult to imagine girls mobbing the British show jumping team on their travels.

It's historical and I think it's important to not sanitize the period. I think in a a sensationalist way it does chronicle sex and power in the 80s as well as gross hypocrisy. I think people are appalled at some of the behaviour and rightly so but it does shine a light on a light on the 80s and I don't think we should cancel it.

My teenage daughter watched Bridget Jones and there's was a lot I had to explain that would not be tolerated now. High Grant sending sexually inappropriate emails to his assistant, Bridget, for example.

One question to you all had the idea of the 'bounder and cad' disappeared e.g. a Connery James Bond disappeared for ever or do the players still appeal?

Ah really glad I found this thread. I enjoyed the TV series so bough riders and rivals books. Wow! What a difference. The TV writers have done an amazing job of capturing the sprit whilst keeping some of the worst misogynistic, homophobic nastiness out.

I was pretty upset by the descriptions of the women in the books regarding their weight, not that it's not a prevailing view that slimmer is better but just the slightly ridiculous idea that someone size 14 couldn't move with ease and would be hot and bumping into things all the time. But then I remembered Dawn French on 90s TV and there was always this sort of attitude of oh she's fat but can still do stuff AND be funny (shock). It genuinely was like weight made you incapable. I do wonder why that was the thinking.

I can't say I enjoyed reading riders and rivals, but they were fascinating. I'd enjoy a mulitgenerational book club to explore some of the themes and hear how attitudes have changed. I worked in a sports shop in the late 90s and "tit cricket" was openly played by the male staff, 1 for a good look, 4 for a brush past and 6 for a full feel as I recall. Gay was about the worst "non-rude" name something could be called. So nice that times have changed, and it's good to be reminded that they have.

Oh and to add, the rape, underage sex and animal cruelty in Riders make it very clear why they started at book 2 for TV!

My mum did some freelance secretarial work and typed this book. My dad knew someone at the time who knew Jilly Cooper’s husband and got her the job. I was young at the time and remember mum bashing away at the typewriter in the dining room and I’d get told off for reading over her shoulder. Mum spoke to JC on the phone a few times and said she was lovely, very sweary and would apologise for her terrible handwriting. Her name is in the acknowledgments, I always have a little look for it when I’m in Waterstones.

I love Jilly Cooper but I think her books need to considered period pieces now, some of her views and the way, women especially, are written about is awful.

That said though they have bought me a lot of joy and I adore the way she writes but i did stop many years ago and haven’t read anything published in the last 20 years because although the language has changed I’m not sure her views have.

I’ve had quite a few friends contact me lately asking me where to start with Jilly Cooper and I’ve almost had to give them a triggger warning because I know they’ll be shocked by some of the content. 🙈

Also I always hated Rupert’s character, he was vile.

Rupert was an absolute cad/B back then.
Cruel to his horses / used women and treated them as completely disposable.
Absolutely awful to Helen( first wife).
He was a typical bad boy that 'some' , not all women found irresistible.
Not that it excuses it, but his back ground was, divorced parents (dad on 4 wife) Rupert inherited the estate (and all its debts) at 21, and through sheer bloody mindedness, pulled it out bankruptcy and made an amazing success of it.
The entire book series (to me anyway) was about Rupert's redemption arc.
As for the age gap- tag was old for age and Rupert was very much young at heart.
She bought out the best in him and he always looked after her.
Yes she was 18, but he did try and stay away from her
But if you follow the books it was a marriage that worked.
It was love.

@Delam I was a kid in the 80s and I do remember watching the horse of the year show but don't recall more than that. I even grew up in rural Gloucestershire (10 miles from Cotchester ;)) so surrounded by horsey types and never heard of a single one.

It's interesting re the Twilight comparisons - my teen dd loved those books and films when younger and I loathed them. She was allowed to read/watch them but had to put up with me lecturing her alongside about how toxic they were and how Bella had no agency. I found them way worse than JC.

Like a lot of others I think Rivals and Polo are the best books. Polo is stacked full of abusive relationships and the consequences of these are writ large. For all I hate Perdita (and I really really do), JC is clear that the emotional neglect of her step father and acceptance/over compensating of Daisy directly contributes to Perditas troubled personality and leave her wide open to enter into her own abusive relationship. I find the Red/Perdita relationship particularly difficult to read actually but at no point is JC saying it's ok or healthy, it's coercive control by any measure.

I have always worried for Jilly about how much of her reality is reflected in her books. Her portrayal of marriage is pretty bloody bleak and of the 'happy' marriages they are often based upon power imbalances or a good character reforming a bad one, taking responsibility for that persons behaviour. The creative characters like Lizzie or Georgie in the Ranaldini books are taken for granted by their husbands, serially cheated on and their careers belittled.....

I also love the Handmaids Take and Anne Frank’s Diary - loving a book doesn’t mean you have to endorse what happens to the characters!

45 years ago 😫

It’s interesting to hear views on the book fromm someone so much younger - like many on this thread, I was a teenager when the novel came out and it is very much of its time.

But in the 1980s, I wasn’t reading books set in the 1940s and wondering why they didn’t present exactly the same values and attitudes as the 80s. These things are constantly changing and evolving. In 2064, young women who aren’t even born yet will be looking back on the values of the 2020s with exactly the same disbelieving slightly judgemental horror as the OP is now regarding the 1980s 😁

The animals cruelty in Riders and Polo and later Jump is horrible. But Jilly is a staunch animal rights activist and she was drawing the public’s attention to what goes on. She’s not wrong. Rupert is despised because of some of his practices in the book. And Jake the hero is written as sympathetic as despite his many flaws he treats the horses with kindness.
The contradictions of Rupert’s character are brilliant in riders. The tenderness he offers Billy and Badger are some lovely moments.

and although we see Rupert as cruel to animals, Rupert sees them as having a job to do. And holds the horses to the same standard as he holds himself. She captures this paradox well.

and I think the bits with the older men and Fen, are sadly life. They aren’t that old in riders (about 28 when Fen is 17 and jumping). Old enough to know better. But let’s face it, a hot 17 year old girl isn’t going to go unnoticed by men in their twenties. We like to think and hope these days they know better. But if it was acceptable I’m sad and sorry to say I think I lot of men would be there…. And actually Rupert doesn’t. He respects the boundary despite fancying her….

then you again for starting this thread. It’s fascinating

This is the third
Riders and the man who made husbands jealous have both been serialised.

I started reading Riders a couple of years ago, hearing from loads of women my age (40s) they had read it as teens and loved it or it was still their favourite book ever in one case.

Was horrified, I didn't even make it past the first set of rape jokes nevermind as far as an actual rape scene. For teenage girls to have had this book as part of their discovery of sex and relationships is horrendous.

I've surprisingly enjoyed Rivals on Disney+ but deep cringe at Rupert and Taggie. The scene where he puts her to bed! 🤢

I was in my teens when I read Riders etc, I didn’t really see anything wrong with them and didn’t think to question any of the behaviour.

I was older when I read the later ones (probably Wicked onwards) and thought they were awful - badly written and inappropriate.

Oh come on - that’s a very disingenuous comment. You’re not simply asking what others think, your disbelief that anyone who thinks differently to you “blows your mind”. A lot of judging coming from you towards those who don’t endorse your opinion.

That resonates so much with me, it was exactly like that where I worked. The past definitely is a different country.

I'm always bemused by readers who get on their high horses when characters in books dont turn out to be perfect little angels with modern attitudes who never put a foot wrong. Where's the story in that? Life and people are not perfect.

It's a satire on what certain circles really were like. They altered details for the tv adaptation to make it more palatable believe it or not.

Riders was the first book but apparently too problematic to make as a show due to being about horses