April 4, 2022
Pulitzer winner Brooks returns after The Secret Chord with a fascinating saga based on the true story of a famous 19th-century racehorse. In 2019, Theo Northam, a Black graduate student in Washington, D.C., finds a discarded equestrian painting that he decides to research for a Smithsonian magazine article. Meanwhile, Jess, a bone specialist at the Smithsonian, gets a call about an old horse skeleton that’s been stored in the museum’s attic. Jess and Theo end up meeting, but first Brooks takes the story to 1850s Lexington, Ky., where Jarret Lewis, an enslaved boy, is the groom for a promising colt that his father, Harry, a freedman, has trained. But then the horse, Lexington, is sold and the new buyer sends him along with Jarret to a Mississippi plantation with ruinous consequences. In 1853, Lexington and Jarret end up in New Orleans, where the horse thrills the racing world, and Jarret hopes to buy his freedom, while back in contemporary D.C., a romance blossoms between Jess and Theo. While Brooks’s multiple narratives and strong character development captivate, and she soars with the story of Jarret, a late plot twist in the D.C. thread dampens the ending a bit. Despite a bit of flagging in the home stretch, this wins by a nose. Agent: Kristine Dahl, ICM.
September 1, 2022
The latest historical novel from Brooks (The Secret Chord) centers around horse racing in the Civil War era. The first part of the story is set in the present, where a Nigerian American art historian and a scientist working at the Smithsonian are drawn together by a horse's skeleton and a painting discovered in the trash. Then the narrative goes back in time to the 1800s, where an enslaved groom named Jarret works as a trainer of race horses. The tension builds slowly, then ends with a surprising and memorable tragedy. The characters are believable and appealing; listeners will see how racism impacts the lives of people in different ways and in different time periods. The five separate voice actors--Graham Halstead, Lisa Flanagan, James Fouhey, Michael Obiora, and Katherine Cittrell--are skilled at using accents and dialect to add life and excitement to the narrative. VERDICT This title will appeal to fans of Margaret Atwood and Kathleen Kent and would be a good for any library looking to add to its representation of the African American experience.--Susan Cox
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 12, 2022
Four decades after covering horse racing as a cadet reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald, award-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks has returned to the track. Her latest book is based on the true story of Lexington, America’s greatest racehorse—a beast so fleet-footed that he inspired the invention of the mass-produced stopwatch and became the subject of several paintings. One such painting is the novel’s narrative linchpin, anchoring the multiple timelines that dramatise Lexington’s life and legacy. In present-day Washington, DC, PhD student Theo rescues the abandoned artwork from a kerbside; his interest in its provenance sharpens when he meets Jess, a Smithsonian scientist who’s discovered Lexington’s articulated skeleton stored in a museum attic. In 1850 Kentucky, Jarret, an enslaved groom, witnesses the birth of a foal with four white feet; boy and horse are later captured in a painting by artist Thomas J Scott. As Jarret forms a bond with Lexington and helps transform him from playful colt to record-breaking athlete, the rumblings of civil war begin reverberating across America. Brooks’ deep empathy as a novelist and her ability to make the past feel as tangible as yesterday make Horse more than the story of a remarkable thoroughbred—with its richly rendered characters and seamless interweaving of past and present, it adroitly captures America’s ongoing struggle with racial injustice and the complex relationships between humans and animals. In the words of one character, ‘a new horse is all promise’—and Brooks’ new novel is a promise fulfilled.
Carody Culver is senior editor at Griffith Review and a freelance writer.