Most of the horse book reviews on this site have been of children's horse books. This one is not a children's book. I came across Horse and thought it would be something I might enjoy. I was excited to see what it was about. I'm sure it's presumptuous for me to criticize a book by a Pulitzer Prize winning author—Geraldine Brooks, but here I go.
Brooks obviously knows horses and does a wonderful job with the horse aspects of the book. In my opinion, Horse would have been marvelous if she'd simply told the horse story. The equine star of the book is the racehorse Lexington (1850-75). Brooks calls him the greatest Thoroughbred sire in the US. Some would disagree with that claim, but he was an amazing horse.
I appreciated how closely Brooks stuck to the known facts about the horse. At birth, he was called Darley. The bay colt was born at The Meadows, the farm of Elisha Warfield near Lexington, Kentucky. His sire was Boston and dam, Alice Carneal. Former slave, Harry Lewis, worked for Warfield as the stable manager and trainer. Lewis was part or full owner of Lexington. Since blacks could not race horses, Warfield was listed as the horse's owner. In 1853, Warfield sold Darley/Lexington and Harry's son, Jarret, to Richard Ten Broeck. From that point, Jarret becomes the main human character. Little is known about him, so Brooks fills in the blanks. Jarret has a special bond with Lexington. Although too large to be his jockey, Jarret serves as his groom, trainer, and companion throughout the book.
Lexington raced a total of seven times as a three and four-year-old. He won six of those races, losing only to Lecomte, another son of Boston. His racing career was cut short when he went blind. In fact, he won his last race in 1855 when he was almost entirely blind. He retired from racing at the age of five. That all happened prior to the Civil War. During the war, Lexington was a popular racehorse sire. To avoid capture by soldiers in need of mounts, Lexington was moved from Kentucky to Illinois.
Not content with telling Lexington's story, Brooks alternates throughout the book between Lexington and Jarret, art history, Jess and Theo's relationship, and modern racial conflict. Theo is a black PhD candidate in Washington D.C. focusing on equestrian art. Jess, a white woman, articulates skeletons for the Smithsonian. Thomas Scott was a real 1800s equine artist who painted Lexington and other famous horses. Martha Jackson was a 1950s New York City art dealer. (I have to confess I'm not totally sure how she fit into the story, other than having an old painting of Lexington. I listened to the audio version of the book, and the character's use of obscenities made me skip over most of her parts.)
What I didn't like about the book - too frequent, totally unecessary use of profanities (including the f word), confusing flipping back and forth between time periods and their characters/scenes, immoral relationship of Theo and Jess, Jess' white guilt, and perhaps stereotypical representation of police brutality against blacks.
Jess sleeps with Theo after only knowing him a short time, then later tells someone she "thinks she is his girl friend." The two met when Jess mistakenly thought Theo was stealing her bicycle. (They have the exact same kind/color of bike.) It seems to me this was an understandable mistake and not evidence of being a racist, however Jess obsessed over how racist it was of her to make this mistake. Not to give the ending away, but there is an incident with Theo and the police which is portrayed as police brutality and racism.
I'm not saying racism doesn't exist. As long as there is sin in the world, I think there will be racist people. However, black people are not the only ones harmed by corrupt or incompetent police. According to Statista, police shootings in 2023 were:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race
On a scale of 1 to 5, I'd cautiously give Horse a 3. Even at that, you might like the book better if you skip over the other parts and just read/listen to the parts about Lexington and Jarret!
Review of Horse, by Geraldine Brooks
Title: Horse
Author: Geraldine Brooks
Originally Published: 2022
Publisher: Viking
Language: English
Paperback: 416 pages
ISBN: 9780399562969
Genre: historical fiction
Reviewer: Vicki Watson, Sonrise Stable Books Review
Date: 2024-10-13
