And this despite the fact that for 561 pages, Smiley, author of 'Moo' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'A Thousand Acres,' never strays from her one subject: the world of thoroughbred horse racing.Īnchored by the calendar of the racing circuit, 'Horse Heaven' starts the day after the 1977 Breeder's Cup at Hollywood Park and ends after the same race in 1999. 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.Odds are, even those who've never been to a racetrack and who don't particularly care for horses will nonetheless find Jane Smiley's new novel, 'Horse Heaven,' an absorbing read.

T., raced in France and rescued in Texas, who is discovered to have some unusual and amazing talents.Īnd then there is the Jack Russell terrier, Eileen, a dog with real convictions - and the will to implement them. 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. 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 sixty-two-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. This time, I mean it,' and something does. Twenty-year-old Tiffany Morse, stuck in her job at Wal-Mart, prays, 'Please make something happen here. 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.

'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.

Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley