Horse Heaven

This one is an all time favorite. I really like Smiley's writing style and this is a subject so close to my heart. Having worked in the racing industry for over ten years I thoroughly enjoyed her familiarity with racing, the people and the horses.

What a great cast of characters, both human, equine and canine. There are several female characters I could just morph into; Rosalind Maybrick, Joy, Tiffany, Marvelous Martha, Deirdre, Krista, Audrey. I adore Sir Michael; what an agent! I love Justa Bob and Mr T; two racetrack survivors who remind me of my own racing retiree, a gelding I owned from 1989 until he passed peacefully in 2015. Residual reminds me of so many fillies I have taken care of and bonded with and thought about over the show more years after they walked out of my life forever. I always felt bad for the grey orphan filly......she was sending them a very clear message that she did not want to be a racehorse. Because she was bred for it, she was put into training and entered in races, and, because she was a Thoroughbred, she did what was asked of her, she raced and finally got a win before they wisely retired her. She had a sweet deal in the end, though, filling a role for which she had an aptitude. Both Epic Steam and Limitless represent the classic racetrack enigma; talented, fast, athletic horses who aren't performing up to their potential and need a trainer who can figure them out......Epic Steam never found that trainer, but Limitless did. Eileen, the Jack Russell Terrier, is a quintessential representation of what I think all Jack Russells are in thought and action.

This novel chronicles all aspects of horse racing, the tragedies, the triumphs, and even the mundane daily activities such as raking the shedrow in the late morning after early chores and workouts are over and almost every horse in the barn is napping. Jane Smiley shows us the difference between a successful but crooked and corrupt trainer (Buddy Crawford), and a brilliant, thoughtful trainer who really pays attention to each horse (Farley Jones).

I find myself re-reading this book every year as the Breeder's Cup approaches.....this is one story I will never get tired of.

Of course, this book is not for people who have difficulty keeping track of more than one character and one theme, only those capable of complex thought should crack this book open. show less

This is the second Smiley book I've read, and both have been oddly very slow and very compelling, drawing me in until I was fully absorbed less in the people than in the bits of culture or history the books reveal. In this one, the people are a lot less interesting than the horses (and one dog). This almost paradoxical slow/compelling trick Smiley pulls off in these books is sort of a marvel.

A little over halfway through this novel, Smiley writes: " "...in 1996, 32,217 (Thoroughbred) foals were born. Of these, 11,056 got to the races as two-year-olds."

It feels at times in this 561-page whopper, that she is trying to tell the story of each one of them, plus the stories of their assorted breeders, owners, trainers, jockeys, grooms, exercise riders, and veterinarians. Smiley is a skillful writer, but even if you are fascinated by horses and horse racing, you may find this a monumental read. (Please note that I will assiduously avoid horse-racing metaphors throughout this review, even though it's greatly tempting!) There are huge sections of internal dialogue in which the human characters bemoan their inability to accept the show more things they love, abandon the things that are destructive to their happiness, and generally dither around until Faithful Reader wants to smack them upside the head and/or tell them to get the hell out of the narrative so the story can progress.

The story, stripped of all the navel-gazing, is that of six of those eleven-thousand-odd Thoroughbred foals that got to the track, and of the humans whose hopes and aspirations and (sometimes) financial survival are pinned to them. Some sections of the novel are actually told from the horses' viewpoints (and from the viewpoint of the most obnoxious dog in literary history) -- a neat trick that Smiley pulls off flawlessly. The animal characters, because they are a lot less whiny and a lot more certain of what they want, are much more interesting than the human ones.

There's a compelling and sometimes even heart-touching story hiding under all this verbiage, and I would have given it four stars instead of three except for one disturbing sub-plot. In it, without any foreshadowing or groundwork, one character suddenly withdraws from what had been a successful personal and professional relationship and sinks into a depression so deep and crippling that suicide would have been a definite possibility -- only to emerge whole and cured after a single telephone conversation with someone who says the decision to remain depressed or not is "up to you".

As the survivor of depressive episodes, I can tell you -- It. Doesn't. Work. Like. That. All the pep talks in the world, whether they come from the inside or the outside, cannot cure the chemical imbalance that leads to systemic depression. Telling someone to "get over it" is like telling a diabetic to "get over" their disease. That one section really colored the book for me. Biased? Probably. And your mileage may vary.

I did appreciate the fact that this novel is ***about*** horse racing (and its people and animals). It's not just a referenced background for characters who have lots of (or very little) money and occasionally flounce off to the racetrack to see "their" horse win a race that makes everything Happy Ever After. show less

Witty, wide-ranging ride through the strange world of thoroughbred horse racing. Smiley juggles the points of view of a large cast of characters, including several wonderfully individuated horses (and a memorable Jack Russell terrier), to realize a panoramic view of life at and around the track in this "comic epic poem in prose." I'm not a racing fan, but I loved this book.

As a horse lover and racing enthusiast, I so wanted to like this book. Instead, it was a distasteful chore to get through. There was a wide panoply of disparate characters presented in what amounted to a long succession of character studies, only vaguely linked together. This in itself is certainly not a bad structure, but the characters themselves were repugnant and uninteresting; there was no genuine insight into their condition, no discernible development of any kind, or anything valuable to be taken away from their stories. I found that I did not feel any kind of emotional attachment or sympathy for a single character, even though there were so very many. The anecdotes narrated by the horses and the dog came off as gimmicky when show more they could have been novel and interesting, and all the details about horse racing and horses was terribly pedantic when it could have been quite intriguing (think Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit"). The resolution, such as it was, was both improbable and unfulfilling. The whole book left me with an unpleasantly smug aftertaste and a general feeling of "So what?" The book didn't leave me with any valuable insight at all, about either the humans or the horses, and the writing style was overly slick, even glib, I felt. Overall I ended up with an indelible impression of a self-important writer showing off while skimping on substance.

I was not even surprised when I discovered later that Smiley, who claims to be a horse lover herself and attempted to portray horses as noble and intelligent creatures in this book, also wrote a long and chilling pro-slaughter article in the New York Times advocating electrocuting to death old and unsound horses as a "humane" method of euthanasia. I did not know at all of Smiley's personal views on horses at the time I originally read "Horse Heaven," but now it has definitely colored my opinion of her writings about horses. That aside, I couldn't even enjoy the way she wrote about humans, and so I highly doubt I will ever pick up another of her books. show less

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 is much more a character epic, and the only redeemable characters are the horses. The horses are quirky and sensitive, and you become attached to them all and feel their ups and downs, their victories and defeats.

The book bounces from character show more to character, in a way that makes you assume that the stories will converge at some point, but they never really do. They are all loosely related by being in the racing world, but that's it. Every time I felt I had a handle on everyone in the book, Smiley added another set of characters - I couldn't keep up!

In conclusion, let me say this to you: if you enjoy plot-driven novels, this book it not for you; if you enjoy slow-moving character studies, you'll enjoy Horse Heaven. My advice is to read this book for the horses, because the humans will disappoint you every time. show less

It was hard for me to rate this book because if I was rating it sheerly on how much I personally enjoyed it - - it would have 4 stars. But I had to factor in some other, more objective criteria - - and that knocked it down a bit.

This book is 650 pages of 3-5 pages "chapters". It follows at least four major storylines with a few minor ones thrown in for good measure. And it features at least 30 characters, all of whom appear and reappear. This makes for some challenging reading!

The stories do connect and intersect and their commonality is the world of horse racing. If you don't know a thing about horse racing, you'll know quite a lot after reading this book. It definitely is soap operaesque! And in that way, I enjoyed the book. It just show more has wonderful details about a world which I knew nothing about. It also brings horses to life in a way that you actually sympathize with their trials and tribulations.

My major criticisms of the book are:

1. If you don't like horses, at least a bit, I'm afraid you really should NOT read this book.

2. There's a few storylines that are a bit far fetched - - like one about an animal communicator that I found both dull and silly. Fortunately, those storylines are not prominent.

3. It's so darn long! But each chapter is so short that it really isn't tough to read like some lengthy books.

What I loved was the detail of the writing and the voice of Jane Smiley. She just has a great way with words and characters. I found these characters to be fascinating and delightful, and I was glad to spend 650 pages with them. show less