Customer Reviews

A Fine Place to Daydream: Racehorses, Romance, and the Irish

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When I moved to San Francisco, my father told me to make sure to look up the author Bill Barich, who lived nearby here and whose early books my father admired. One was called LAUGHING IN THE HILLS. I would see Barich at different literary events and went to several readings by him. He was always a laughing, jolly sort of person. But lately I haven't seem him around town, and I had just about forgotten his existence, when a friend popped his new book to me in the mail, knowing of my love of horses and Irish ancestry. As it turns out, Barich fell in love with a woman from Ireland, and moved there to be with her. I didn't even know, but why would I?

His new book picks up with his life in Dublin, a peripatetic life because even though he is besotted with Imelda, he ignores her often to go hunting down horseflesh. The trotters of US race courses are very unlike the jumpers prized in Ireland, and for Barich it's a whole new ballgame. He is older now, on the brink between middle age and being a senior citizen, so some of his moves have a frantic, late Yeats quality to them. As though he knows this will be his last hurrah.

The writing isn't as daisy fresh as in the early books my late father so loved, but as always, he knows how to inject fun into his travel narrative. On St Patrick's Day he gets caught in a saturnalia of drunk racegoers, including a "pair of short chubby guys in leprechaun costumes who were hamming it up for the crowd, their faces painted green and their bloodshot eyes brimful of booze. I was in the midst of a Lorca rhapsody, caught in a swirl of green shirts and ties, green scarves and socks, green dresses and beer, and probably green underwear." Barich is literate beyond the realms of most sports writers, few of whom would have tried even to make the allusion to Lorca's "Romance Sonambulo," the poem that begins, "Green, how I want you green" "Verde que te quiero verde./ Verde viento. Verdes ramas." But Barich makes it almost work.

His story of following the Gold Cup from beginning to end will enthrall even stay at homes. Wonder when we'll next see his smiling face at the San Francisco Public Library, where he would sometimes grace the floor.

I've long touted Bill Barich's LAUGHING IN THE HILLS, named by Amazon as one of the best sports books of the last century, and now after many years here finally is a satisfactory sequel. Barich follows his soulmate back to Ireland, where he also falls in love with the pastoral steeplechase and horses over hurdles on the green:

"I took to it so readily that the flat races began to bore me. Devoted to speed, they were over in a flash, while a good chase unfolded as leisurely as a Hardy novel. The jump races were rich in subplots and dramatic reversals of fate, too, plus they have a pastoral aspect that was transcendent, and entirely beautiful."

Literate, lyrical, and a tonic for the mind. Highly recommended.

I picked this book up entirely by accident at the public library. Never having heard of Bill Barich, I had no idea what a fine writer he was but the subject matter is one I had long fantasized about: going to Ireland to follow the races.

For an American who's only knowledge of horse-racing is watching the Triple Crown on TV, racing in Europe (especially the UK & Ireland) is an entirely different (& much kinder) sport. The races are run on natural terrain & not necessarily on an oval track. There is no 2 year old racing (a 2 year old Thoroughbred is the equivalent of a 12 year old human). The fact that horses generally don't start racing until they're fully mature at 4, and the natural turf of the courses is reflected in the much longer careers of European horses; 8 & 9 year old champions are common. Races are run both on flat & over fences, and are a much better length than US racing, where 1 1/2 miles is a rarity. In Europe, 3 miles is pretty standard, & 4 miles is not unheard of. Taken all together, European racing is not only better for the horse, but more interesting and varied for the spectator ('punters' in turf lingo).

So Bill Barich, recently transplanted to Dublin finds himself in a world very different than US racing. It's a world where there are betting shops on every corner, and one of the biggest bookmakers runs ads on TV (odds on an old lady crossing a busy street? 7-1!). It's a world in which he can visit the training facilities of top trainers to have a jaw with them about their training methods, & have a chat with the top jockeys over a cup of tea in the family house. It's a world where a local track has a 4 day meeting & the school in town let's its' students out to attend. One of the top commentators on Irish TV is 'the racing priest' a parish priest who gives tips on the races. It's a world I have often daydreamed about joining.

Barich charts his course over a racing season, ending in Cheltenham which is a 4 day meet in the Cotswalds, & is the European version of the Triple Crown. Over the season he has a few particular horses he follows closely, as well as sometimes giving in to impulse & placing losing bets. Written beautifully, A Fine Place to Daydream may start you daydreaming as well.

Bill Barich, A Fine Place to Daydream: Racehorses, Romance, and the Irish (Knopf, 2005)

Bill Barich has written a sequel of sorts to Laughing in the Hills, a book Sports Illustrated rightly calls one of the best sports books ever written. In this one, Barich has relocated to Ireland and is in the throes of a new relationship whilst chronicling the Irish jump season. The best part about the book is that, well, it's Bill Barich, who could make the phone book interesting; that the story involves horses and their people is just the icing on the cake. A Fine Place to Daydream spends less time on its author (Laughing in the Hills was a memoir before memoiring was cool) and more time on the Irish jump scene, which makes for compelling reading. I've been a big fan of Barich's for a long, long time, and this one has done nothing to dissuade me. Another fine piece of writing. ****

If Bill Barich's masterpiece, Laughing in the Hills, is a book about the nature of chance and coping with loss, his newer book "A Fine Place to Daydream: Romance, Racehorses, and the Irish" is about newfound love.

Barich's tale of love is told via the story of his infatuation for steeplechase horseracing. The result is a finely woven tale about romantic love, the process of falling in love, the mystery of how we come to love that which we love, and the places in which we find ourselves falling in love.

In "A Fine Place to Daydream", Barich's infatuation for Irish Steeplechase horseracing is as unexpected and refreshing as his love for Imelda, his new Irish girlfriend, who across the course of the book becomes much more. Barich met Imelda at an art gallery show in London. Their love affair did not begin well. Imelda snubbed Barich's first advance on her, but Barich resolved (motivated by some mysterious urge) to persist, to win the heart of this stranger who lived in a different country, who he didn't even know. Imelda warmed to the advancing Barich.

Barich's successful courtship, and new relationship, leads Barich to Dublin to live with Imelda, despite his original plans to move to and retire in the quiet simplicity of the Sierra Nevada's. Love operates against even the "best laid plans" of man. It is in conjunction with this new, exhilarating discovery of romance in a foreign land, filled with exuberance and gratefulness, that Barich pursues another passion- steeplechase horseracing.

In "A Fine Place" Barich is not the soul searcher that he is in "Laughing in the Hills." He is a lightly-trotting rover, who has let his defenses down and pried his eyes open. He is an observer in search of nothing particular, seeking only to enjoy the act of observation. Barich's exploration into the world of steeplechase horseracing is a byproduct of his love for Imelda. His tale of that journey is a celebration of the opportunities open to those willing to take a plunge.

Discovery must begin with a leap of faith, and with Barich there is no exception. He takes a chance, and sacrifices his plans for retirement (a fishing lodge in the Sierra's), and rather takes to the rainy, uncertain environs of Dublin, chasing his dreams and palpitating heart. His leap of faith is rewarded, through not only the love of Imelda, which for Barich was only a confirmation of that which he already felt in London, but also through the discovery of a new passion, a new sport, a new community full of people.

People, who like Barich, share a similar passion for horses. Whether it is McManus the financier turned horse owner, or the bookies that make the quiet journey by train from Dublin into the Irish countryside for another day of racing, all share in the fact that they are motivated by the same mysterious pull, a force of attraction, that is as real as it is unexplainable. What they all share in common is that, unlike most, they gave into that pull. They all took that leap of faith; and in so doing, they found love.

"Unreadable."

"Huh? Barich is that bad a writer?"

"Not at all. He's a fine writer - with the exception of his maddening inability to provide the month & year in which events occurred (which, in turn, removes the perspective of time in his narrative - an absurd thing to be missing in a book @ the ongoing, multi-year career of Best Mate, three-time winner of the UK Cheltenham Gold Cup).

"But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Barich could be Shakespeare & you'd never know it. The publisher elected to go with a size type so tiny that the letter "A" is exactly 2/16th's of an inch high.

"And that's a capital "A." The "small-case" letters are less than 2/16th's of an inch in size - 3/32nd's of an inch in height - @ one-third the size of the type used for the text of "Graveyards of Champions," by Bill Heller.

"Bill Heller might be one-third the writer that Barich is, but at least I can read what Heller has written."

And the type size used for "A Note @ The Type" is even smaller! This results in an explanation @ the use of (Centaur) type - that is completely illegible. That's a first!

Also A First: A decently written (& in its best moments, brilliantly poetic) book didn't make the cut. AFP was put down.

The book is TEDIOUS. A few mediocre yarns and lots of detail about Irish horseracing last year and before. Lots of old, once-charming Irish cliches repeated and repeated. Too many names, too much trivial detail about weather, horses and people you don't need to know.

I'm a horse owner and interested in racing. I was bored after 50 pages, but battled on for awhile. Maybe the ending is a corker, but I doubt it. Never got that far.

This would make a good 1,500-word magazine piece. Barich is a good writer, but this book is destined for the remainder table - and soon. It is a chore to read it. I think two stars is generous.