The first time I read this book, I totally hated it. I'm glad I gave it another chance. It is completely voice-driven. So if that isn't your thing, or if you know zilch about horse racing, this might not be the book for you. ( )

My brother-in-law is a racetrack jockey. My sister-in-law exercised racehorses before leaving the track to teach. I worked as a bi-lingual clinical social worker on the backstretch of the Chicago-area racetracks for 25 years. I serviced horsemen and horsewomen ranging from trainers, assistant trainers to undocumented hotwalkers and grooms. Exercise riders and agents included those I served. I found Jaimy Gordon's novel, based on her one summer working on a racetrack as teenage groom decades previously, patronizing and insulting. Those from the track I know who read her novel concur. The folks who populated her novel came across like carny side-show novelties. Those of us who worked on the track for decades are not novelties. If ever there was such a thing as cultural appropriation by an author who extracted fame and money and awards (unbelieveably, the National Book Award given to this novel) from a subculture she had almost no meaningful contact with, we have it here. The fact that the National Book Award was given to a novel both mediocre and patronzing belies the reality that too often a talent for self-promotion transcends any talent to honestly reflect reality. In war, we have called it, "Stolen Valor," claiming an undeserved heroism. The many brave and hardworking horsemen and horsewomen wherever they work in the hierarchy of the backstretch racetrack deserve far better than this condescending appropriation of their lives. ( )

Why do authors have to be all mystical? That's one reason I read genre fiction. It generally is pretty straight forward and you don't get paragraphs like this one

Her hands felt their way blindly along the ridges and canyons and defiles of the spine, the firm root-spread hillocks of the withers. She rolled her bony knuckles all along the fallen tree of scar tissue at the crest of the back, prying up its branches, loosening its teeth

All she's doing here is rubbing his withers. Just tell me what happens and stop with the poetry, especially if you can't do it well. Plus the whole thing is sort of written in vernacular. Even when they weren't talking.

Often I read the reviews of a novel by others to help me understand what I think of novel. Not so much to put words in my mouth but rather to help me clarify my thoughts. It didn't really work in this case. I am still struggling to understand why I did not like this more. The slang used throughout the novel was definitely challenging, but I often like that type of challenge and didn't find it otherwise in this case. It also helped create a sense of authenticity about the world around the racetrack. The characters were quirky, which made them interesting, but I think that was part of the problem: they were so quirky they felt like caricatures of the real thing. I do know that I had no real feeling for any of the characters, except Medicine Ed, neither attraction or repulsion. The world of the racetrack felt real enough, in all of its slime and ugliness, and yet uninteresting. I credit the author with creating something unique, it just was not something in which I found much enjoyment. ( )

I could not get into this book. I finished it because it had two things going for it; the audio book reader was excellent, and the writing was decent.

I did not develop any kind of relationship with any of the characters or horses, and felt lost in the storyline most of the time. Was there a point to this story, or was it just a slice of life story that wanted to be more? Basic storyline is about a bunch of two-bit, washed up horse trainers, jockeys, owners, groomsmen and horses at a small time race track in West Virginia in the 1970’s. It has all of the makings for a story I would like, but there were too many characters and none of them seemed real enough to care about. I finished the book thinking, “I just don’t get it.”

I doubt I will remember anything about this book next week.
( )