Great Reads for Great Readers

 

Horse, by Geraldine Brooks.

 

            Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks has excelled herself yet again with ‘Horse’, her novelised true story of America’s greatest racing stallion Lexington, illustrious sire of future generations of champions, and an essential and integral ancestor almost lost to history.  Were it not for the efforts of determined academics who were relentless in their detective work following up the clues leading from the forgotten equine skeleton labelled ‘horse’ in the attic of the Smithsonian, one of America’s finest museums, and researching the provenance of several obscure equine paintings found in unlikely places, Lexington would have remained unsung and unheralded still, and his marvellous genetic history lost, not to mention the turbulent historical significance of the times in which he lived and flourished, the 1850”s and 60’s.

            Ms Brook has reimagined that time with her usual skill:  from the time Lexington was foaled in Kentucky in 1850 he was personally cared for by Warfield’s Jarret, a young slave whose father was Doctor Warfield’s chief trainer, so essential that Dr. Warfield allowed him to buy his freedom and currently, Jarret’s father is saving to buy Jarret’s freedom, too.  The ugly face of slavery is not so evident on Warfield’s farm if one is a successful trainer of thoroughbreds and his son is following reliably in his father’s footsteps, but when the brilliant new colt is eventually sold, Jarret is sold along with him, and he and Lexington have some bitter experiences – and some great adventures, for Lexington proves his brilliance time and again:  both have such a bond that they are inseparable until one of them dies:  it is up to the modern researchers, Theo, a Nigerian Art Historian and Jess, an Australian scientist working at the Smithsonian, to join the clues and reconstruct the history, especially of the shattering impact of the Civil War and the emancipation of all those enslaved and Sold South.  Tragically for Theo and Jess, it is patently clear that racism is still alive, well and flourishing one hundred and fifty years later:  racism, overt or otherwise will never go away.

            Ms Brooks has written a fitting and loving tribute to equine beauty and genetic brilliance, and a bald and frightenly factual recitation of the tragedy of racism, inbred and otherwise.  FIVE STARS.