🪦 DROPPED 🪦
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse–one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.
Someone loaned me this book in September, to be returned in November.
To my horror, it is November, and I have not yet picked up the book. I have roughly 2 weeks to read this, so I’m putting it ahead on the 20 books I borrowed from the library (not an exaggeration, I went hog wild after abstaining for some months).
The good news is that it is actually a good book. The bad news is is that despite that my brain is now having trouble keeping up with each character introduced. Every chapter is from a certain character’s POV, with quite good, defined voices for each of them. The written point of view is even changed for Thomas, whose is the only one written in first-person. It is easy to tell who is speaking— which, with a number of characters from wildly different backgrounds, is incredibly impressive.
I made it about a third of the way through the book before I just couldn’t do it anymore.
Okay. Honesty. I just… it doesn’t vibe with me. It makes me feel like I am supposed to care, because it is about racism in Kentucky and modern racism. But it tickles the back of my mind that I am reading from Black viewpoints in America written by a white Australian woman. The themes of history being hidden and recovered by those with a vested interest are supposed to parallel the awareness of racism with the discovery of the horse.
No, no, listen.
The horse, being born from a pairing the horses don’t choose, are bred, creating a creature that has the potential to be of wretched temperament and terrible power. Raised with kindness and care, the horse grows strong and fast, hailed as the best racer of all time. And then after his death he finds his way into a forgotten attic space with his name entirely forgotten.
One of the main characters, Jarret— an enslaved Black boy— was born of a union between two chosen slaves. His father bought his own freedom and strove to buy out Jarret as well. To that end, Jarret is raised with kindness and care, showing a skill for training horses like no other… but he is one of those enslaved, forgotten by history, until someone digs up that history just like the damn horse.
Yes, it’s based on a true story and all, and I am so painfully aware of these themes, and I’m— hold on—
—a mere 27% through the damn book, but… it ain’t for me! It took me three days to read for four hours altogether. It’s good! Really!
But it ain’t! For! Me!
