Customer Reviews

Horse Heaven

5 star:		(60)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

END

Horse heaven is bold. Jane Smiley strives to explore all facets of racing, from the Derby and internationally listed races to minor track sprints to layup farms and killers. She is equally bold to sketch the many characters found in racing, broadly divided among the horse-struck and the rest, but also split among the good, the indiffernt, and the evil. Most excitingly she delves into the minds of the horses and animals, exposing the dialogue we all know goes on behind those eyes.

Other comments are well-taken. There are so many characters laced throughout the story you'll need to thumb back to find them. Dostoevsky made me do the same thing.

If you love horses and racing, and if you love literature, you will truly love this book.

I love Jane Smiley. I love horses and dogs. I love to read a big, rolling story. I REALLY wanted to love Horse Heaven. But I could barely get through it, and did so only because I paid full price for the book the minute it came out! I could not keep the characters straight...I was totally bored by race-talk. With so many characters it was difficult to really care about any of them (though I did have more interest in the four-leggeds than in the two-leggeds.) I was glad to shelve this and dive into Joyce Carol Oates' BLONDE (so far so wonderful)

I just finished this book and had to hop on line to see what others said. I enjoy reading Jane Smiley's occasional articles in Practical Horseman and thoroughly enjoyed both A Thousand Acres and Barn Blind - the latter because it also dealt with horses. However, I couldn't finish Liddy Newton or Moo...so! I'm really a fan of any horse-related fiction and truly enjoyed this book and experienced that "Oh No! I Finished It!" feeling when I was done. I'll admit there are a lot of characters, but it's not so hard to keep them straight. Anyone who is interested in horse racing or thoroughbreds in general (hunter jumper people too) will want to read it. Those who are not will still enjoy the characters and the excellence of the writing. I especially liked the team of Farley, Joy and Elizabeth. Give it a try - and to those on-line reviewers who put it aside, take it up again. You really won't be sorry.

It always amuses me in reading the reviews on Amazon to see how varied we are in our responses. Some readers found this book to be boring. I thought it was one of the most interesting books I've read in years! I loved it and have read it several times. The characters are brilliant, and I find Jane Smiley's mixture of semi-documentary tone and whimsey charming and appealing. I know nothing about horses, but her glimpses into the moods and thoughts of the thoroughbred horses SEEM spot on, and give this book an irrestible appeal. (To the reviewers who were upset at the ommissions in the audio CD, I'd say this: DON'T BUY ABRIDGED AUDIO VERSIONS! By definition, something will be left out. I enjoyed the book so much that I bought an UNABRIDGED audio version for trips, and "JustaBob" was there!)

Before I read Horse Heaven, I had never read anything by Jane Smiley, but I grew up reading anything I could get my hands on about horses. What made this book such a pleasure to read, aside from the author's wonderful turns of phrase and vivid imagery, was the unorthodox format and ending. I, too, was expecting everyone to meet up at some race or another at the end, but I'm very glad they didn't - that would have been too cliche. I think it was much more realistic that some of the characters crossed paths and others didn't. I've never read another horse book like it.

I also loved the scope of the book. I don't think a single character should be removed, as the obvious goal of the author was to present a complete picture of the great variety of characters, human and equine, involved in horse racing. True, the beginning can be a little confusing, and I do need to read it a second time to fully grasp it all, but it gets easier to follow the characters as the story progresses.

Don't read this book if you're looking for a plot-heavy book that moves along quickly. This is more of a character piece, or rather a character epic, and the plot serves the characters.

This is one of the best horse racing novels I've read! The cast of characters, horses and people, is confusing at first (I needed to keep checking back to the list in the front through the first few chapters), but I soon worked it out becasue each character has such a distinct personality. To really enjoy the book, like I did, though, I think you need to be a true horse lover and an avid racing fan.

admittedly, before i read this book, i was both a jane smiley fan AND a life-long horse owner/lover, so this book came out of the gate with pretty good odds. because of the numerous characters, human, equine, and canine, the start was a little tough, but once i'd found my rhythm and figured out who all the characters were, i didn't want to get to the finish line. the horses were far better developed as characters than were the people (--justa bob was my favourite!--), but i think even a non-horse lover could find this book to be quite entertaining. as it's making the rounds of barns in my "neigh"borhood, we're all applauding smiley's ability to capture a world that only those who live in it seem to know. i'd enthusiastically recommend this to horse lovers and to others who are interested in that world.