Jane Smiley
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 640 pages Rating: 3.88 | 4897 Users | 363 Reviews
Particularize Epithetical Books Horse Heaven
| Title | : | Horse Heaven |
| Author | : | Jane Smiley |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 640 pages |
| Published | : | August 26th 2003 by Ballantine Books (first published 1999) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Animals. Horses. Contemporary |
Relation In Favor Of Books Horse Heaven
"It's not true," says a character in Jane Smiley's funny, passionate, and brilliant new novel of horse racing, "that anything can happen at the racetrack," but many astonishing and affecting things do—and in Horse Heaven, we find them woven into a marvelous tapestry of joy and love, chicanery, folly, greed, and derring-do. Haunting, exquisite Rosalind Maybrick, wife of a billionaire owner, one day can't quite decide what it is she wants, and discovers too late that her whole life is transformed . . . Twenty-year-old Tiffany Morse, stuck in her job at Wal-Mart, prays, "Please make something happen here . . . This time, I mean it," and something does . . . Farley, a good trainer in a bad slump; Buddy, a ruthless trainer who can't seem to lose even though he knows that his personal salvation depends upon it; Roberto, an apprentice jockey who has "the hands" but is growing too big for his dream career with every passing day; Leo the gambler and his earnest son, Jesse, who understands everything about his father's "system" except why it doesn't work; Elizabeth, the 62-year-old theorist of sex and animal communication, and her best friend, Joy, the mare manager at the ranch at the center of the universe—all are woven together by the horses that pass among them: Two colts and two fillies who begin with the promise of talent and breeding, and now might or might not achieve stardom. There are the geldings—Justa Bob, the plain brown horse who always wins by a nose, a lovable claimer who passes from owner to owner on a heart-wrenching journey down from the winner's circle; and the beautiful Mr. T., raced in France and rescued in Texas, who is discovered to have some unusual and amazing talents. And then there is the Jack Russell terrier, Eileen, a dog with real convictions—and the will to implement them. The strange, compelling, sparkling, and mysterious universe of horse racing that has fascinated generations of punters and robber barons, horse-lovers and wits, has never before been depicted with such verve and originality, such tenderness, such clarity, and, above all, such sheer exuberance.Details Books As Horse Heaven
| Original Title: | Horse Heaven |
| ISBN: | 0804119430 (ISBN13: 9780804119436) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Shortlist (2001) |
Rating Epithetical Books Horse Heaven
Ratings: 3.88 From 4897 Users | 363 ReviewsEvaluate Epithetical Books Horse Heaven
Review originally and more completely published at http://www.epinions.com/review/Horse_...I found Horse Heaven to be entirely too disjointed, jumping from unconnected event to unconnected character every few pages. Smiley did give all her animals very human qualities, making them as integral to the story as the actual human characters. At one point, we even ride around in Eileen the scrappy terriers mind, hearing her thoughts. The novel jumps from character to character. Some of theseI'm not really sure how I feel about the book overall. It was excellent in many ways, but sort of pointless overall. It's a soap opera about horses & the people working with them on the track with a sort of beginning & a kind of end, but there was a lot of history & certainly life goes on after the book ends. The writing was good, engaging & yet there wasn't a single defined plot, so I got a bit lost at times. Toward the middle of the book, I almost gave it up due to characters
This is a book with a HUGE cast of characters. In fact, the first 2 pages is the list of characters, from horse owners, trainers (and their assistants), breeders, jockeys, bettors, the horses themselves, and the racetracks. While the story is linear - even to the sections being dated - it does of necessity skip around to the various groups of characters, many of whom are relatively unknown to each other and who don't interact with the other groups of characters. I was not confused, although
March 15 ~~ Review coming tomorrow.March 16 ~~ I gave this book four stars yesterday but while thinking over my reading experience before sitting to write this review I've dropped it down to three. The basic idea of the whole thing is compelling: follow the stories of certain Thoroughbred horses during their first three years of life. Will they turn out to be the horses they were expected to be? What kind of drama will surround them and their people? (Because there is always drama around a
I'm not really sure how I feel about the book overall. It was excellent in many ways, but sort of pointless overall. It's a soap opera about horses & the people working with them on the track with a sort of beginning & a kind of end, but there was a lot of history & certainly life goes on after the book ends. The writing was good, engaging & yet there wasn't a single defined plot, so I got a bit lost at times. Toward the middle of the book, I almost gave it up due to characters
Jane Smiley's novel about horse racing is one of the best books I have read this summer. It was loaned to me by my sister-in-law, a horse woman herself and daughter of a horse woman. Jane Smiley owns a race horse or two and clearly knows plenty about the subject. A big part of the book's success is the way she makes the horses characters in the story as much as she does the humans.I knew nothing about the world of horse racing, except that people like to go to the races and bet money. I learned
This is my favourite Jane Smiley so far. It takes place over two years, and follows several American flat racing Thoroughbreds, their trainers, owners, jockeys and associated hangers-on. There are dirty training tactics, personal trials and tribulations, affairs, distressing animal abuse, big money deals and scams, betting ... and of course the thrill and beauty of the actual races and the horses that run them. It is typical of her other books that I've read in that it has a large cast of
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