Just Read: Horse by Geraldine Brooks.
Review of Horse with SPOILERS. Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars
A compelling story with a complex narrative, I found Horse to be engaging and dramatic. The book covers multiple timelines and uses multiple points of view to tell the stories of the people who affect a horse’s life and the people who are affected by him. The horse, Lexington (at first named Darley), was perhaps the greatest racehorse of the nineteenth century, making his name before the Civil War. His trainer and friend, Jarrett, was a slave who bonded with the horse as a colt and nurtured that bond throughout Lexington’s racing career and later through his blindness.
The relationship between Jarrett and Lexington shows the depth of Jarrett’s character—he eats and sleeps with the horse, cares for him in sickness, and trains him to be a champion. The way Jarrett treats Lexington is a sharp contrast to the way Jarrett, a slave, is treated, and the contrast is a disconcerting reminder of the atrocious inequalities of that time.
Brooks leads us through Jarrett’s personal development from a stable boy to Lexington’s trainer to a free man. Always a thoughtful person, Jarrett takes us through the period leading up to the Civil War with his contemplations on slave ownership, abolitionists, and the plight of the black man, free or slave. Jarrett’s interactions with powerful white men in the horseracing business allow him to see white supremacy in a way other black men may not. Eventually, Jarrett finds freedom in Canada.
Brooks also brings the story into the present through Jess and Theo, a bone archeologist and an art historian. Jess has helped re-discover Lexington’s bones stored away in a museum, and Theo acquires a painting of Lexington from a neighbor’s trash bin. As Jess and Theo begin to realize the importance of the horse, the bones and the painting become central to the story as evidence of Lexington’s timeless greatness. Jess, who is white, and Theo, who is black, form a complicated bond.
The inequalities of the slavery era echo in the present, as Brooks describes the discrimination that Theo faces—even from Jess. Unlike Jarrett, Theo does not find his freedom, finally slain by a policeman’s bullet in a mistaken (and biased) belief that Theo was involved in an assault. The book ends tragically for Theo and for Jess, who leaves the United States to return to her native Australia.
I found the book to lag a little through the middle, and that is why I give it 3.5 stars. Brooks does a good job of propelling the story in the first part and last part of the book, but the middle seems to lack the focus of the rest of the book. The ending was a surprise, with Jarrett leaving America for Canada and becoming a gentleman and Theo’s senseless murder. All in all, I found it a good read and would recommend it.
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