Be Specific About Out Of Books Horse Heaven
| Title | : | Horse Heaven |
| Author | : | Jane Smiley |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 640 pages |
| Published | : | August 26th 2003 by Ballantine Books (first published 1999) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Animals. Horses. Contemporary |
Jane Smiley
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 640 pages Rating: 3.88 | 4897 Users | 363 Reviews
Interpretation Concering Books Horse Heaven
"It's not true," says a character in Jane Smiley's funny, passionate, and brilliant new novel of horse racing, "that anything can happen at the racetrack," but many astonishing and affecting things do—and in Horse Heaven, we find them woven into a marvelous tapestry of joy and love, chicanery, folly, greed, and derring-do.Haunting, exquisite Rosalind Maybrick, wife of a billionaire owner, one day can't quite decide what it is she wants, and discovers too late that her whole life is transformed . . . Twenty-year-old Tiffany Morse, stuck in her job at Wal-Mart, prays, "Please make something happen here . . . This time, I mean it," and something does . . . Farley, a good trainer in a bad slump; Buddy, a ruthless trainer who can't seem to lose even though he knows that his personal salvation depends upon it; Roberto, an apprentice jockey who has "the hands" but is growing too big for his dream career with every passing day; Leo the gambler and his earnest son, Jesse, who understands everything about his father's "system" except why it doesn't work; Elizabeth, the 62-year-old theorist of sex and animal communication, and her best friend, Joy, the mare manager at the ranch at the center of the universe—all are woven together by the horses that pass among them: Two colts and two fillies who begin with the promise of talent and breeding, and now might or might not achieve stardom.
There are the geldings—Justa Bob, the plain brown horse who always wins by a nose, a lovable claimer who passes from owner to owner on a heart-wrenching journey down from the winner's circle; and the beautiful Mr. T., raced in France and rescued in Texas, who is discovered to have some unusual and amazing talents.
And then there is the Jack Russell terrier, Eileen, a dog with real convictions—and the will to implement them.
The strange, compelling, sparkling, and mysterious universe of horse racing that has fascinated generations of punters and robber barons, horse-lovers and wits, has never before been depicted with such verve and originality, such tenderness, such clarity, and, above all, such sheer exuberance.
Declare Books In Pursuance Of Horse Heaven
| Original Title: | Horse Heaven |
| ISBN: | 0804119430 (ISBN13: 9780804119436) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Shortlist (2001) |
Rating Out Of Books Horse Heaven
Ratings: 3.88 From 4897 Users | 363 ReviewsWeigh Up Out Of Books Horse Heaven
Wonderful book. Smiley artfully made me care and worry about a character that never spoke a word - Justa Bob. She does it without ever anthropomorphizing him.Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley is a novel about horses and their breeders, owners, trainers, grooms, jockeys, traders, bettors and other turf-obsessed humans. It takes place over two-years and chronicles the lives of various horses and their people.I know a little about horses - that is to say I've ridden horses, been to riding competitions, and been to the race track - but I still found this book particularly hard to get into. You see nothing ever happens, there is no real plot. The entire novel
I fell in love with a race horse named Justa Bob...
640 pages! Too long. I would have given it 5 stars, but for the length. It's about Thoroughbreds and owners and trainers and horses and love! Very enjoyable, but some of the characters were dropped at a point in the middle and then quickly reintroduced at the end. Some of the chapters felt like a New Yorker story. But, all in all, enjoyable.
I'm not really sure how I feel about the book overall. It was excellent in many ways, but sort of pointless overall. It's a soap opera about horses & the people working with them on the track with a sort of beginning & a kind of end, but there was a lot of history & certainly life goes on after the book ends. The writing was good, engaging & yet there wasn't a single defined plot, so I got a bit lost at times. Toward the middle of the book, I almost gave it up due to characters
Just loved how Smiley contrasted thoroughbred racing horses - who are born to know what they love and what they are meant to do - with a whole gaggle of self-doubting, identity-conflicted humans. Funny, "sprawling" but controlled, lotsa anthropomorphism but no saccharine sentimentality. Smiley has an insider's knowledge of her milieu, but also respects and trusts her reader enough not to bog the story down in definition or description. Even though they are frequent, her race scenes are never
Review originally and more completely published at http://www.epinions.com/review/Horse_...I found Horse Heaven to be entirely too disjointed, jumping from unconnected event to unconnected character every few pages. Smiley did give all her animals very human qualities, making them as integral to the story as the actual human characters. At one point, we even ride around in Eileen the scrappy terriers mind, hearing her thoughts. The novel jumps from character to character. Some of these
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