In some ways, an odd choice for a horse character to slip into, since Hawkes quickly desposes of many of the characteristics that draw us to them--their joie de vivre, for instance--as Old Horse (christened Sweet William by his loving breeder family) decides at the age of 3 weeks(!), when his mother Molly-Long-Legs dies of colic to embark on a life of "calculated cynicism and misanthropy." He kills at least one human and injures and perhaps kills more-- not saying they didn't deserve it). There are some wonderfully "horsey" moments--for instance, when Willy is running along and becomes intensely aware of his own muscles and beauty of movement and is absorbed in the glory of his own magnificence (something I think we all see horses seem to do). And moments went the horses become tense and attentive for reasons they're not even sure of are vivid and visceral. (Interesting and amusing, too, is the snobbery--a Thoroughbred with so little use for other horses and animals like goats "beneath" him--a little Arabian mare's "disdain," etc., though I don't think I buy into it.) If that's what you're looking for, though--and I was, that essence-of-horseness kind of thing--it's not what Hawkes is primarily interested in. He's less about capturing Horseness in words than in an anthropomorphizing metaphor (which, to be fair, he notes at the outset). Violent and unpredictable, Willy self-destructs as a racehorse and is sold off, spends 20 years of neglect on a dude string, and is eventually rescued by a good-hearted if profoundly silly man, Master. The human characters pretty much take over at this point with Master and his Irish trainer taking turns telling endless boring stories. Improbable incident, grotesquery, Hawkes' signature sexual obsessiveness, and pompous-ass prose--big disappointment. Of course, it all ends abysmally on the meat truck with the vet about to administer the death barbiturate. I'd avoided this book all these years, knowing the horse would die, thinking it would be so well written as to be nearly impossible to take...But I never doubted that the book would be well worth it once I worked up my courage. Don't know about a book till you read it. ( )