This book saved my life

Two years ago, Charlie Mackesy uploaded a drawing of a boy and a mole to his Instagram account. The boy looks young, barely a toddler, barely the size of the mole, and the mole looks slightly concerned; it adds to the cuteness. ‘Tales from the underground. Another mole day I think,’ the artist captioned it.

The response was warm. Someone commented that the image took them ‘right back to the feel of my own storybook childhood’, another joked that the boy and the mole were discussing politics. What nobody realised, then, was that this was the start of what would become the surprise bestseller hit of the year, selling more than half a million copies in four months.

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse isn’t a conventional picture book. Rather than a linear narrative, it’s a collection of quiet musings and conversations. The four titular characters meet one another and share each other’s confidence. It’s not aimed at any clear audience, and works as well for eight-year-olds as it does octogenarians. And yet, in the final dark months of 2019 and the tremulous beginning of 2020, it offered hope to hundreds of thousands of people.

Why Mackesy, and why his band of creatures? The artist’s name wasn’t well-known - even now, he could walk down the street and not be recognised. But his work was having an undeniable impact. While the book was being made, Mackesy’s now-recognisable painting, in which the Boy asks the Horse what the bravest thing he’s ever said, and the Horse replies, ‘help’, was being put on notice boards in schools, prisons and hospitals.

Mackesy’s drawings and words, which encouraged kindness and support, found their way onto the sides of buildings; people were getting his characters tattooed on their bodies.

People have found The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse a balm and an uplift. Lynsey Ritchie was given the book when she was half-way through 15 rounds of chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. ‘It just touched a nerve,’ she tells me. ‘It was so refreshingly simple, uncomplicated and fresh.’ Ritchie says the book continues to help on her healing journey, and she finds herself reaching for it often. ‘It’s as if [Mackesy] manages to put into words all the jumbled thoughts I am carrying in my head and jumbled feelings in my heart,’ she says. ‘It has given me strength, encouragement, laughter and a voice in the hardest of times.’

John Fish, another reader, tells me the book has saved his life. He was experiencing suicidal thoughts having been signed off work after suffering from years of workplace harassment, but remembered the messages of Mackesy’s paintings at his 2018 exhibition. Fish cites two of the most popular images, in which the Horse and the Boy cite the power of asking for help. ‘I held those two pages [of the book] very close during the darkest moments of my life,’ Fish says. ‘Readers no longer needed the disasters explaining to them, they needed a hug.’

And what The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse undoubtedly offers is comfort. Macksey’s book has racked up nearly 1,000 reviews on Amazon.com, many of them heartfelt, many of them similarly inspired. ‘I have felt quite fragile lately and this book filled me with hope’; ‘a companion to help me through all it is to be a living being in this life’; ‘it is a slice of calm in this hectic and mad world’ and ‘I've felt more at peace today having read it than I have for such a very long time’. Mackesy’s online reviewers suggest that his book is a touchstone to be returned to - they say they keep it on their bedside table for that very reason - and several compare his illustrations and outlook to that of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books, which were originally illustrated by E.H. Shepard.

Mackesy has explored simple notions - and ones that, sadly, feel increasingly scarce in our online, divided lives. Love, hope, friendship and the courage of asking for help resonate deeply at a time where mental health can’t be taken for granted and kindness seems out of reach. The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse may not be able to save the world’s problems, but it has reminded thousands of people of the qualities that can.