Customer Reviews

Mariposa Blues (An Avon Flare Book)

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Wonderful dialogue, touching coming of age story, and a refreshing setting: a racetrack. I have come back to this book again and again.

Ron Koertge, Mariposa Blues (Avon, 1991)

I've never been a big fan of Ron Koertge's work, and this from back in the days when he was publishing "adult" stuff in books like Six Poets. I am, however, a sucker for all things Thoroughbred-related, and so when I stumbled upon Mariposa Blues, Koertge's young adult novel set at the mythical Mariposa Downs in central California, I couldn't resist it. The first ten pages seemed to cement my dislike of Koertge's writing-- good lord, how the metaphors are belabored (and spelled out afterwards!)-- but eventually these started to balance with some snappy writing, and I have to say, the book did win me over in the end-- though not nearly as much as it could have with a little more polish.

The plot is pretty straightforward bildungsroman-- a horse trainer's kid is heading into puberty, chafing under the ministrations of his parents, starting to see his longtime best (female) friend in an entirely new light. What sets this one off, aside from the setting, is Koertge's way with a one-liner; some of the remarks bandied about by the various characters had me laughing out loud, which does a lot to mollify the painfully transparent scenes where our fearless narrator is mulling things over and comes to the same conclusions that the reader did back on page one. This sort of thing isn't so terrible when it's more skillfully executed, but here, every revelation falls flat.

This is one of Koertge's earlier young adult novels, and I have one of the more recent sitting on the stack ready to go; I'll be interested to see if he's gotten any better at this. But this one will certainly do for horse freaks and folks who like their dialogue with a good shot of pizzazz. ***