Derby Day: A Novel [Hardcover]

D. J. Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2012

Nominated for the Man Booker Prize, an exquisite tale of romance and rivalry, gambling and greed, from one of England’s finest writers.

As the shadows lengthen over the June grass, all England is heading for Epsom Down—high life and low life, society beauties and White chapel street girls, bookmakers and gypsies, hawkers and thieves. Hopes are high, nerves are taut, hats are tossed in the air—this is Derby Day.

For months people have been waiting and plotting for this day. Everyone’s eyes are on champion horse Tiberius, on whose performance half a dozen destinies depend. In this rich and exuberant novel, rife with the idioms of Victorian England, the mysteries pile high, propelling us toward the day of the great race, and we wait with bated breath as the story gallops to a finish that no one expects.

A "Best Book of the Year" for 2012 by Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Derby Day is a triumphant success. In this unputdownable Victorian romp Taylor enjoyable proves himself to be one of the finest of our 21st-century novelists.” (Financial Times )

“Taylor has written an exceptionally clever 19th-century novel with a richness of character that almost matches his models of Dickens and Thackeray.” (Sunday Times, London )

“Derby Day will be hard to put down. As ever with Taylor, literary complexities lurk under the smooth surface of a stylish page-turner.” (Condé Nast Traveler )

About the Author

D. J. Taylor is a novelist, critic ,and biographer whose Orwell won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. His most recent books are Kept; Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation; Ask Alice; and Derby Day, which was nominated for the Booker Prize and was selected as a Washington Post Best Book of the Year.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Pegasus (April 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1605983322
• ISBN-13: 978-1605983325
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #615,068 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars D--d fine Victoriana August 21, 2011

By las cosas

Format:Paperback

This is a sprawling novel that takes place in approximately 1870 and culminates in the Epson Derby. The writing is an approximation of that employed in Victorian novels, and the structure of the book, along with the characters and plot, would not be out of place in a serialized novel of the time.

This is risky for a novelist to attempt, and I'm not certain whether such a concept will prove popular in the United States, but I found it generally successful. The caveat to that is that I read and reread a large number of Victorian novels, and have great patience for their length.

The pacing of the book is languid, particularly at the beginning, but the various tentacles of the plot finally come together for the Derby. Actually the main plot strands come together around the race, but there is a non-Victorian epilogue that tells us what happened to other characters.

The main character, Mr. Happerton, has many of the characteristics admired by Victorian novelists and readers. A self-made man who, while clearly only interested in his own monetary advancement, is pleasant, diligent and farsighted. But we soon learn he is an amoral cad, and in no sense a gentleman. All keen readers of Victorian fiction know the eventual destiny of such persons. The only suspense in the book (and by this I mean Dickens' suspense, not Wilkie Collins' mystery) is who will win the Derby.

The book is great fun, filled with minor Victorian wit (sitting longer than Gladstone, endless dissenter quips) and a reasonably good ear for Victorian prose. But the entirety of the book is a tad thin, and none of the characters, or scenes, live up to the standards of fine Victorian literature. After finishing this I reread Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds. Rebecca Happerton is an insecure, repressed woman who would benefit from some mentoring from Lizzie Eustace.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Enigmatic Evil September 9, 2011

By Carol A. Levine

Format:Paperback

Derby Day, D.J. Taylor- An homage to the Victorian novel. Taylor deftly conjures the genre, although only a few characters resonate. He defies any period in his portrayal of Rebecca, the central female figure. She is the epitome of enigmatic evil. Delicious. More Hardy than Thackeray, Taylor paints bleak Lincolnshire countryside mist or decrepit Fitzrovia alley blight with a finer brush than Belgrave Square's West End Society. ****

Carol Colitti Levine The Side Trek

2.0 out of 5 stars More of a plod than a dash May 15, 2013

By John Fitzpatrick

Format:Hardcover

This is a crime story set around the Epsom Derby race in the late 19th century that is more of trudge through a muddy field than a dash round one of the world's most famous racecourses.

I'm not sure if it is meant to be a pastiche of writers like Trollope or Thackeray but it makes painful reading.

The characters have no depth, the plot is full of holes, the writing all over the place - particularly the descriptions of Derby Day* - and the end is a tortuous attempt to wind everything up as though the reader cares what happened to Evie, Mr Glenister, the Honourable Major Stebbings, Miss Kimble etc.

If you like this kind of cliché version of Victorian England, with its class snobbery and characters ranging from safe crackers, bookies, jockeys, down at heel retired army officers to country squires, lawyers and police detectives then it might be your cup of tea.

Otherwise, give it a miss and choose something a bit more authentic like Dickens or a better writer. John Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman", for example, is set in the same period and is far superior to this work.

*Here is an example of the author's desperate prose: "A riot of colour. Colour everywhere. The horses are of every imaginable hue: black, bay, chestnut, grey, a multidudedof shades in between. The jockeys' silks - scarlet, magenta, carmine, green-and-white, quartered blues and yellow - rustle in the breeze."