Historical novel based on the true story of a racehorse
Members enjoyed Horse as an interesting historical novel with a plausible narrative which held our attention from beginning to end. It begins by telling the story of Theo, a black American art historian working on his Masters degree, who discovers a discarded painting of an unknown horse in a neighbour’s castoffs. He decides to investigate its history to see if it aligns with his thesis about the depiction of black Americans in art.
The book then introduces Jess, a white Australian who is in Washington on a scholarship to complete her masters in zoology and works in the Smithsonian Museum Support Center. She is asked to find the two hundred year old mounted skeleton of a horse, wanted by an English researcher, which has been stored somewhere in the bowels of the museum and lost to sight. In her search she learns that this is a very special horse.
Next we travel back in time to 1850 to meet Jarret, a young slave who is owned by a man called Dr Warfield, a retired obstetrician who owns a horse stud and slaves in Kentucky and has set up the local Jockey Club. Jarret proves his skill in training Lexington after the foal’s birth at the stud. The horse with four white socks is based on a real racehorse of the same name with an incredible racing history.
In telling Jarrret’s story we learn how slavery was entwined in the development of the horse racing industry in the south before the civil war. We see the every day misery of the slaves who, even when not physically abused, are still without any rights to material gain or emotional security whether derived from family ties or marital relationships. Completely dependent on their masters for how and where they spend their days they are little different to the animals they tend.
(Being an avid horse lover, Geraldine Brooks also includes discussion among the book’s characters of horse racing then and now for the reader’s edification.)
Jarret’s story is braided together with those of other characters he is associated with, including a horse painter dependent on rich, proud and egotistical patrons who want their beautiful horses and other possessions such as their slaves immortalised in paint, and a young woman who is growing up opposed to slavery and willing to help young Jarret to flee the future mapped out for him by his master – her grandfather – with his beloved horse.
The start of the civil war and how it affects the lives of the characters – and what happens to Lexington – is the next suspenseful section of the book.
However, while we are learning the lessons of the past the reader must also navigate the social conditions of 2019 America. No slavery exists after the civil war ended, of course, but what else has changed? We return to Theo and Jess whose romantic relationship begins badly when Jess is on the point of accusing Theo of stealing her bicycle. However, it subsequently blossoms in the search for the artist of the horse painting and the skeleton of the extraordinary animal itself. But the undertones and threats of modern racism are never far away and reach a dramatic climax which is both shocking and easily believable.
