Rating: 
Summary: Disappointed Horse Lover
Review: I read and loved Smiley's "A Thousand Acres" and "Barn Blind" long before she won the Pulitzer Prize, and "Horse Heaven" was one of the most enjoyable novels I have read in a decade. I am also a lover of horses, own two, ride regularly and am fascinated by theories and science relating to horse behavior. However, I am extremely disappointed by Smiley's new book, "A Year at the Races". "Horse Heaven" was extremely well-researched and presented a reasonably accurate, if overly glowing, picture of the horse racing industry. "Races" is a collection of anecdotes strung together to try to prove Smiley's theories about horse motivation and behavior. Some of these are third hand descriptions which I found just incredible. For example, she "heard" about a trainer at a track who within two days had trained a horse to go out and find someone at a crowded race track, and she uses this unsupported anecdote and several others as "proof" of horses' innate intelligence. If you are going to tell me stories, please do so as fiction and not as a rationale for theories that require much more real evidence to substantiate them! From her past work, we know that Jane Smiley is an extremely intelligent and erudite woman. In this book she comes across as a ditzy, middle-aged, horse crazy woman who carefully instructs her horse trainer and jockey to run a horse race based on what the horse has to say about it through an animal communicator, Hali. As she reports, keeping a horse at a race track costs about the same as a year at Harvard, and she's relying on a horse communicator to make the decisions about the race? As Smiley acknowledges at one point late in the book, "I am anthropomorphising shamelessly", which means to attribute human qualities and characteristics to animals. Many animal lovers do this, but I would expect a writer of Jane Smiley's caliber and intelligence to improve our understanding of how horses are similar to humans through carefully supported research, not through outlandish stories that would have a better place in "Horse Heaven II", which I would snap up in a minute!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Animal Behavior Questions
Review: Jane Smiley ruminates on her intense passion for horses and at the same time steps back and speculates as to the fundamental nature of the horse. She considers the implications of neural development as postulated in "Theory of Love" and wonders if the anti-social behaviors she sees in one of her mares relates back to the indifferent mothering she received as a foal. She is right when she notes that animal behavior studies with horses are too expensive to be heavily pursued. She considers their place in the human to horse species interaction and notes that much of their natural group behaviors lends them to close and caring relationships with humans. I took note of her observation that horses allowed to live in natural herd conditions work out many of their horse behaviors on each other rather than on the humans they deal with everyday, making life better for everyone. I hope all horse owners seriously consider her advice on training and caring for the horse(s) in their lives. I too have an intense interest in animal behavior and also renewed my own love affair with horses in middle age.
Rating: 
Summary: Getting the story straight
Review: The quotes that reviewer Greg Smith has included aren't actually in this book. They are on a liberal web site where Ms Smiley and several others really let it rip the day after the election. And while that may not have been the kindest thing to do, given the usual midwestern subject matter of her books, it really isn't relevant to whether this particular book is good or bad. Ms Smiley is entitled to voice her opinion. (First ammendment and all that.) If you want to read this essay in it's entirety, reviewer SC has thoughtfully provided the URL on every single Smiley title. What a service;-P I've read most of Jane Smiley's books and they are all excellent. Well written. Funny. Heartwarming. I even liked the books about horses, which normally aren't my favorite animal. Don't skip her books over politics, because her stories don't include the kind of rhetoric that her essay did. They are marvelous.
Rating:
Summary: Every Horse Story is a Love Story
Review: When Jane Smiley won the Pulitzer prize for Literature in 1992 for her novel "A Thousand Acres", she celebrated by buying a skinny, white Thoroughbred gelding called Mr T. Mr T, Smiley then discovered, had trained at Longchamp in France and had won races all over the United States. From here there was no going back. Thanks in part to Mr T, Smiley now owns a string of Thoroughbred race-horses and dreams, but only dreams, of leaving her writer's days behind her and becoming a full-time horse-trainer. In the meantime, she has compromised by writing "A Year at the Races", an account of her experiences as a racing-stable owner. Each chapter reads like a letter to a friend and the entire book covers an amazing amount of ground. The author looks at the special role of horses in human society: Horses, according to Smiley are more intelligent than dogs and more like humans in their wide-ranging abilities. She considers the personality types of horses, compares them to human types, and considers how we both react to our environment, challenges and communities. The book also takes a long, hard look at what horses have to do earn their living. Horses, unlike other "pets", are too expensive to be indulged as only companions: They must race, jump, show or carry. Mini-horses are even earning a place as guides for the blind. A horse that fails to socialize properly and learn to earn a living has a poor future. That gives owners and trainers a particular responsibility to help the horse succeed at its job and remain healthy and strong.
Where I am sure the book will draw criticism is in Smiley's use of "horse communicators," who claim to be able to "talk" to horses. It sounds silly and it's only when the author disarmingly admits that such activities are probably "rubbish", but nevertheless wildly entertaining, that you realize that it is not Smiley who is the fool. She is an intelligent and open-minded individual, who can explore possibilities that are beyond the imagination of most of us. That is what made her a Pulitzer prize-winner and that is what makes "A Year at the Races" a great read, even for those who don't consider themselves "horsy."
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