Horse Heaven

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't be more true of the real world of racing!
Review: This book made me a fan of the author's for life. Jane Smiley writes this to the point I cannot believe it's a work of fiction(including even the anthropomorphism of the animals in the story). I having grown up on the fringe of the racing community in Illinois and in being a "horse person" myself, I would say Ms. Smiley has created characters from those I have known personally. The story reads so closely to the real thing, you can't help but become completely engrossed. The characters are so well developed and the storyline moves along so well, I don't think there's a better story written about the world of Thoroughbred racing, fiction or non! One of my favorites. I was sad to have to have read the last chapter...not one you want to see end.

Rating:
Summary: Won Over
Review: This book is everything I look for in a great read - an engrossing story well told. The only great challenge was catching up on all of my work - which I put off to finish the book. I was actually surprised that it was so consistently enthralling from start to finish.

Rating:
Summary: Horses as Stars
Review: I didn't realize until near the end of this wonderful book that the horses were the real characters with the stories that tracked through the book to resolution. It was kind of a secret, hidden in full view, among the details of all the activity and people -- as vibrant, unpredicatable and eclectic as a day at the races. I followed Smiley along for the ride enjoying her brash style, often laughing out loud. I assumed the humans mattered -- they do in most books. I got them all mixed up, but carried on, and then at the end the light dawned ... it was really about the horses. Each main character (horse) represented a racehorse outcome. I was so enamoured with this discovery at the end that I started the book over to read with a keener eye. I won't give away the ending of course, but I'll give away the beginning. Read for the horses, you won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Horse Heaven a Heavenly Read
Review: This is such a lovely, entertaining, fascinating, moving book that I hated to finish it. I got so fond of all the characters (including the horses) and wanted to continue to track them and their fortunes. I haven't had such fun since I was mad about Black Beauty as a child. And it stirred up my affection for horses, their intelligence, they fortitude, their dignity and their beauty and their close relationships with people -- that there is a whole world out there in which people are fixated on horses is rendered absolutely real and compelling in Smiley's novel. It made me sorry not to be a trainer or a groom or a horse masseuse or at the very least, an owner. This book has everything -- pathos, satire, great characters, wonderful insight into horses and people abound. This novel has it all.