Horse by Geraldine Brooks

Horse is a sweeping novel by the Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks and she tackles a lot in these 400 pages. Horse is historical fiction told in alternating timelines: 1850s Kentucky, 1954 NYC and 2019 Washington, DC. It is the story of Lexington, one of the winningest race horses in history who went on to sire numerous successful offspring.

I was curious to see how Brooks would handle the history of racing- horses are a huge part of my life but I have great disdain for this "sport" because of its innate animal cruelty. We lived in Saratoga Springs for a decade (one of the country's biggest tracks) and I saw first hand just how violent this sport is. Brooks makes note of that here and doesn't glamorize racing while acknowledging the role it played in American history.

Horse goes places I didn't see coming. For me, the most special part of the story is the relationship between Jarret, an enslaved groom, and his beloved Lexington. Jarret is part of this horse's life from foaling until death and he risks his own safety many times to keep Lexington out of the hands of those who would do him harm. My heart broke over and over again when Jarret thought he would be separated from the one thing he loved and Brooks crafted a very touching bond between the two.

Race plays a big role in this narrative, both in Jarret's story and in the modern day chapters that give us a white, female scientist and a Nigerian-American art historian both working to piece together different components of the history of this famous horse. I cannot speak to whether this plotline will sit right with some readers - it is not my place to say- but the two timelines do illuminate that as a nation we have not come very far and if that was Brooks' goal, she achieved it.

I am still processing the end of this book as to whether I feel it worked for me. I also thought (having read Brooks other works) that her prose read very differently here- just something I kept pondering. This is an ambitious novel that will no doubt provoke conversation.  Thank you Viking Books for my copy!