Define Books During Horse Heaven
| Original Title: | Horse Heaven |
| ISBN: | 0804119430 (ISBN13: 9780804119436) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Shortlist (2001) |
Jane Smiley
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 640 pages Rating: 3.88 | 4897 Users | 363 Reviews
Specify Regarding Books Horse Heaven
| Title | : | Horse Heaven |
| Author | : | Jane Smiley |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 640 pages |
| Published | : | August 26th 2003 by Ballantine Books (first published 1999) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Animals. Horses. Contemporary |
Description As 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.Rating Regarding Books Horse Heaven
Ratings: 3.88 From 4897 Users | 363 ReviewsWeigh Up Regarding Books Horse Heaven
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 charactersAdded 7/26/12. (first published 1999)July 6, 2018 - I borrowed this ebook from our public library.July 9, 2018 - I am giving up on this book! I read 32% of the book. It is too hard to follow because there are too many characters and too many scene shifts. Very confusing and frustrating. The following GR review agrees with me:=========================="This was an awful book...I read to page 155 trying to give it a chance but it had way too many characters and every chapter was a page and a half
Added 7/26/12. (first published 1999)July 6, 2018 - I borrowed this ebook from our public library.July 9, 2018 - I am giving up on this book! I read 32% of the book. It is too hard to follow because there are too many characters and too many scene shifts. Very confusing and frustrating. The following GR review agrees with me:=========================="This was an awful book...I read to page 155 trying to give it a chance but it had way too many characters and every chapter was a page and a half
I fell in love with a race horse named Justa Bob...
I really enjoyed this story, though at first I was not sure what I had gotten myself into. It was 22 discs long which for me, is a big book. Half way through the book though I was really enjoying the story.It is a story about racehorses, the horses, their owners, trainers, assistant trainers, grooms, vets and riders. Jane must really know her horses because when she became the horse and told us how they were feeling, to me, it was quite realistic.There was Just a Bob, Epic Steam, Residual and
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
This is my favourite Jane Smiley so far. It takes place over two years, and follows several American flat racing Thoroughbreds, their trainers, owners, jockeys and associated hangers-on. There are dirty training tactics, personal trials and tribulations, affairs, distressing animal abuse, big money deals and scams, betting ... and of course the thrill and beauty of the actual races and the horses that run them. It is typical of her other books that I've read in that it has a large cast of
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