Keeneland : A Novel [Hardcover]

Alyson Hagy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2000

A compelling novel set at Kentucky's Keeneland race track. When her estranged husband becomes indebted to impatient loan sharks, Kerry Connolly learns that liking a horse doesn't make it faster and loving one means genuine risk.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Even readers who don't give a dang about horses should love Hagy's fresh, funny, brilliantly made and irreducibly twangy debut, whose sassy but chronically unlucky heroine shows us the hardscrabble underside of the glitzy horseracing world--the lives of the itinerant workers who tend to the horses. Practically raised on horseback, 27-year-old Kerry Connolly goes back to her native Kentucky after her marriage to wealthy, abusive Eric Ballard sours. Now "just another saddle-sore working girl boomeranging back to where she came from," Kerry goes to familiar Keeneland Stables with $10,000 she's filched from Eric. She also brings her unshakable longing for Sunny, the racehorse she had to abandon when she fled her marriage. Kerry recovers her old job at the stables, exercising horses preparing to race. Over the course of the novel, she manages to alienate three bosses, sleep her way into trouble, and win and lose $35,000, all the while crafting increasingly hopeless schemes to win back Sunny. Battered, broke and lonely, Kerry is a woman at rock-bottom, but she regards even her most dramatic misfortunes with enough wry wit to ensure her survival. Eking out a living on the fringes of a world that depends on high-stakes games of chance and calculation, Kerry comes to realize that life outside the track is also a bettor's sport. While Hagy mastered concise narrative in her two short story collections, Hardware River and Madonna on Her Back, here the plot tends to amble, and her conclusion lacks punch. Such objections dwindle, however, when measured against the great virtues of her prose, perfectly measured and rich as Kentucky bourbon. Agent, Gail Hochman at Brandt & Brandt. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Kerry Connelly is a mess. She's dirty, cold, bruised, and broke (well, almost broke, if one discounts the ten grand hidden in the trunk of her car, money she stole from Eric, her gambling-addicted husband who beat her senseless in a debt-riddled panic). At 27, Kerry flees New York for the environment she knows and loves best--the Kentucky racetrack. Hired on to prepare horses for winning, Kerry is a magnet for trouble. Smart, mouthy, and miserably ambivalent about the men in her world, she takes her lumps and then takes some more, all the while single-mindedly focused on retrieving her beloved thoroughbred, Sunny, trapped in a dangerous money scheme hatched by Eric to keep the loan sharks at bay. Critically acclaimed short-story writer Hagy draws the reader into the gritty, behind-the-scenes world of the racetrack with a vengeance. This is a hard novel to put down, even as Kerry's willfully destructive sense of honor makes one cringe--you want her to get it right, and you know she's hellbent on getting it wrong under the mistaken notion that the resulting pain is cleansing. Highly recommended.
-Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First edition. edition (April 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684855038
• ISBN-13: 978-0684855035
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,778,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and currently live at the foot of the Laramie Mountains in Wyoming. I come from a storytelling culture, and I am drawn to how Americans, especially people who live in hard-to-live places, weave stories around their failures and successes. The Outer Banks of North Carolina, the hills of Virginia, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the crags and plains of Wyoming--these are all filled with stories for me, filled with striving and loss and survival.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, A Real Girl, March 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Keeneland : A Novel (Hardcover)

How often do you ever get to read a novel where the heroine is a true stand-up lady, smart and tough and cool? How often do you come across clean, smooth prose expressing knowing thoughts and a new milieu--the back side of the race track--not to mention a great STORY? I can't wait to see this movie. Julia Roberts, option this now! It won't be as good as the book, but this one's worth experiencing in all mediums. I loved it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Where's the horses?, February 15, 2001

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Keeneland : A Novel (Hardcover)

Alyson Hagy, Keeneland (Simon and Schuster, 2000)

"Finally," one reviewer raves, "a female character with backbone!" No arguments from this section. In a world of neuroses, obsessions, and "diseases" manufactured by the self-help market in order to sell products-- all of which seem to be exaggerated in modern literary heroines-- it's nice to find a main character of the feminine persuasion who doesn't [care] about any of it. Kerry is a heroine with traits we don't often see in heroines; confused but willing to muddle through, defensive, not angry at the world but not in love with it, either. In short, she's allowed to be a human being, with all the complexity that involves, rather than a cardboard cutout who fits the easy definitions of self-help books (most of which are more fictional than this).

One character, however, does not a book make (in most cases, anyway; I'm sure Jean-Paul Sartre would take exception to that statement). Hagy places her heroine in the opening days of Keeneland's spring meet, newly returned from a stint in New York and a bad separation from her husband. She has no friends per se, but enough acquaintances to get along, making enough money to subsist, at least. But like all communities, it's impossible to stay connected to your former life without it catching up with you, and complications ensue just as things start settling down.

My main problem with the book, in fact my only problem with it, is that Hagy attempted to write to the non-horse crowd by keeping some of the book filled with horse terms whil leaving them out of others; in many cases, it seems she took exactly the wrong turn in deciding what to leave in and what to take out. In most cases, the decisions were understandable, even if they could have been better; I realize someone who's spent a good portioni of their lives around Keeneland isn't likely to notice many of the small details, but it's the details that make Keeneland one of America's finest racetracks. Also, I'd expect someone who exercises horses in the mornings to take a little more note of the actual racing that's gonig on, rather than have it mentioned a few times as background noise. It's possible to write lovingly about the sport and its evirons while still creating a book that's not specifically about horse racing; Bill Barich showed the world that twenty years ago with his brilliant book Laughing in the Hills. Because of this, there were times when the book left me wanting to know more about what was going on around Kerry. After all, it doesn't matter how absorbed you are in your problems, you can't be around a horse race without getting caught up in it.

The book's good points certainly outweigh the bad ones, and it's worth seeking out. ***

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Wholly Unsatisfying, July 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Keeneland : A Novel (Hardcover)

Sorry ya'll, I didn't like it. While I must admit the writing is at times skillful, many times the dialogue was inauthentic. I also found little to connect with, as almost every character in the book is a miserable down-and-out who has made their own misfortune. Perhaps the biggest disappointment to me was the lack of exploration of the relationship and connection Kerry supposedly has with Sunsquall. As one who has found her "horsey soulmate", I can darn well tell you if she was on the grounds at Keeneland, I'd find a way to see her, and not just in passing! Hagy's treatment is to have Kerry simply state that she loves the filly, with little more to support that assertion. Well, sorry, I need more than that to buy it.

I'm at Keeneland a minimum of 3 days/week, and have loved it and this industry for more than 30 years. If either were as portrayed by Hagy, I'd have to walk away, heck I'd have to question why ANYONE would continue in the industry. Yes, there are low-lifes, connivers, and irresponsible wretches on ANY backside (and generally in any workplace!), but this book is devoid of all but minimal contrast, which when present is packaged in stereotypes (eg, the "crusty ol' KY horsewoman", who must be from Arkansas or something because some of her phrasing just ain't KY).