Our April selection is Horse by Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks. The title refers to Lexington, a real-life thoroughbred stallion that was the fastest runner and greatest sire of the 19th century. But the story is not so much about the horse as about the two young Black men connected to it: Jarret, a 19th century horse trainer born into slavery, and Theo, a 21st century PhD student who finds an old painting of the great stallion.
Jarret and Theo’s stories are fictional, but the themes are timeless. Horse is "a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism” (Amazon).
Brooks, a meticulous researcher…writes about our present in such a way that the tangled roots of history, just beneath the story, are both subtle and undeniable. - The Washington Post
A testament to the intelligence and humanity of animals, a stinging rebuke of racist and abusive humans, and a study of how the past gets recorded, remembered, and remade…anyone who ever grew up loving horses, anyone who dearly loves an animal, will find a cornucopia of riches in this novel. - The Boston Globe
It’s looking unlikely that I will get the book in time. Library has fewer copies so the waitlist is crawling.
Libby says 13 weeks before I get the book. Interestingly, all my holds say the same story — a lot of people reading the same books!
I read it and then tried to renew it, but there were holds so I had to return it. I put another hold on it so I can review it before our discussion. Shouldn’t be a problem – there were 13 copies out and I was the third hold place.
