HORSE HEAVEN [Hardcover]

Jane Smiley (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Unknown (2000)
• ASIN: B0028QAG6W
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (123 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,521,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

87 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A rousing gallop through the horse world, April 4, 2000

By 

Candace "thepageturner" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Horse Heaven (Hardcover)

I blow hot and cold on Jane Smiley. "Liddy Newton" was okay, and (blasphemy!) I really didn't care for "A Thousand Acres."

But I loved "Moo," that astute and funny take on Midwestern ag academe.

So now there's "Horse Heaven," a book bound to boost race track attendance nationwide. Smiley takes two years in the lives of horses and horse people, and weaves a brisk and bright book about the racing world. The character list includes the gamut of racetrack regulars-the trainers, the hyper-rich owners, the gamblers, the jockeys, horse-crazy teenage girls-and best of all, the horses. Jane's a risky writer and takes a chance on working the horses' perspective into the narrative, which is a kick. The horses are wonderfully imagined, and it's great fun to find out just what they think about racing, and how well they might do betting on each other.

The narrative needed to be pulled in a little, however. Toward the end, the various stories are reeled out a little too far to be tied up in a manner clever enough to do justice to the rest of the book. Overflowing with imagination, "Horse Heaven" needed a bolder editor to bring it over the finish line a winner by more than a nose.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I'm in "Horse Heaven", May 10, 2000

By 

Anne Cahill (Groton, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Horse Heaven (Hardcover)

What a good book this is! I have never read Jane Smiley before and have nothing to compare this to, but I found the writing to be excellent, the characters to be extemely well-developed and accurate, and her grasp of horse-racing and the horse world in general to be masterful. The amount of research it must have taken for her to so correctly capture the little nuances of everyday life with horses is boggling, and perhaps that is why some -- people who are not "horse people", as we call them -- found the story and characters confusing and hard to follow. Ms. Smiley must have immersed herself in the racing scene to prepare for writing this book, and her readers do not have the same luxury. Those that already know what it's like (and that could mean from any "horsey" discipline, like the hunter/jumper world) have a head start and therefore a great advantage in reading this book. I found her characterizations of ALL creatures, be they human, equine, or canine, to be right on target. Wonderful reading for the equestrian-minded!

43 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Still can't figure out if I liked it!, July 12, 2000

By 

Win - See all my reviews

This review is from: Horse Heaven (Hardcover)

Having been an excercise jockey and assistanttrainer/barnmanager for a stable full of racehorses of course I wasgoing to read this book. Now take into consideration that I am not only a very experienced horseperson (racing and hunter/jumper) but I have a degree in English Literature. With this in mind, realize that I did not read "Horse Heaven" to gain any profound knowledge of the horse world, nor did I expect to be enlightened by its metaphoric artistry. No big surprises there as far as the book goes.

Smiley draws out for the reader a very accurate portrait of the racing world as a whole. She creates real-life characters of racing - the crooked trainer, the clueless owners, the ever hopeful horse crazy young girl, the slightly cooky but ever lovable animal communicator, the trainer trying to get a break, the up and coming jockey, and the ever hopeful bettor. The book touches on many of the harsh realities of track life - common injuries that easily threaten a horses career, having a horse claimed, shady veterinary dealings, bad luck, and bad decisions. For anyone who wants to get an idea of everything involved with the glamorous and not-so-glamorous horse racing scene, this book could easily serve as the beginnner's guide.

In its entirety, "Horse Heaven" is much like an impressionist painting: From far away the big picture looks great. As an overall description of the racing world and so on Smiley paints a perfect picture, but the closer you look, the picture becomes more and more fragmented. While the characters were believable, they were lacking any depth. Smiley did not give them enough attention or time to allow the reader to understand them at all. Their actions and reactions make no sense because the reader does not know them well enough to understand why or how they came to such conclusions! Each character is only a study in brief that never fully allows the reader enough detail to gain any insight to that character's mind. Perhaps this is a result of Smiley taking on a bit too much at once. The most endearing and realisitic character in this novel is Justa Bob, that claimer who continually gets passed along until someone deems him useless and then neglects him.

Something that gets totally lost in this book is the plot! Nothing ever happens! Smiley bounces from character set to character set in a manner that would lead you to assume these groups will intertwine, which they do to some extent in a six degrees of seperation kind of way. It could be said that since this is a realistic portayal of racing life, the story is realistic too in that day to day life appears uneventful. I would have liked a little more plot though, if only for sheer entertainment value.

With all this said, I must admit that I did find it hard to put the book down. I started to like the people and horses and kept hoping something monumentous would happen, and little by little, small things did.

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