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Title details for Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley - Available

Horse Heaven

by Jane Smiley
Suzanne Toren
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of A Thousand Acres comes this serious and tragic, funny and uplifting look at humanity - set in the world of horses. "Eight or nine times a day, day after day, men and horses go out and line up and start running, and the next thing you know, you are in mystery-land." So says Leo, a sad-sack gambler with an incredibly intricate betting system. Leo is one of dozens of characters - some human, some equine - who struggle through two years in the life of horse racing. Unimaginably rich magnates rub elbows with stable managers struggling to make ends meet. Trainers and jockeys balance the precarious demands of owners and horses. Can't-miss colts canter next to glue-factory-bound geldings. From tragic spills and winner's circle presentations, the only thing predictable about horse-racing - and life - is its total unpredictability. As in the best-selling Moo, the combination of Jane Smiley's endless imagination and Suzanne Toren's perfect narration creates a fabulously complete, utterly unique world.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 1, 2015

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781490648651
      • File size: 741747 KB
      • Duration: 25:45:18

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      A sometimes biting, sometimes tender exploration of the world of horse racing and the people and horses whose lives orbit it, Jane Smiley's ultimately hopeful vision offers all the thrills of watching a pack of thoroughbreds fly down the final stretch. Reader Mary Beth Hurt's enthusiastic performance is addictive, and she's especially distinctive when she's portraying characters like loudmouthed owner and breeder Al Maybrick or boorish trainer Buddy Crawford. None of the emotional states she portrays, however, from high-pitched falseness to self-assured hustling, is keener than when she's a lover, or a husband, or a wife murmuring those deepest yearnings of the human heart. J.M.D.
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 3, 2000
      The Chinese calendar aside, 2000 may be the Year of the Horse. Almost neck and neck with Alyson Hagy's Keeneland, this novel about horses and their breeders, owners, trainers, grooms, jockeys, traders, bettors and other turf-obsessed humans is another winner. Smiley, it turns out, knows a prodigious amount about Thoroughbreds, and she is as good at describing the stages of their lives, their temperaments and personalities as she is in chronicling the ambitions, financial windfalls and ruins, love affairs, partings and reconciliations of her large cast of human characters. With settings that range from California and Kentucky to Paris, the novel covers two years in which the players vie with each other to produce a mount that can win high-stakes races. Readers will discover that hundreds of things can go wrong with a horse, from breeding through birth, training and racing, and that every race has variables and hazards that can produce danger and death, as well as the loss of millions of dollars. (A scene in which one horse stumbles and sets off a chain reaction of carnage is heartbreaking.) Characters who plan, scheme, connive and yearn for a winner include several greedy, impetuous millionaires and their wives; one trainer who is a model of rectitude, and another who has found Jesus but is crooked to the core; two preadolescent, horse-obsessed kids; a knockout black woman whose beauty is the entrance key to the racing world; the horses themselves (cleverly, Smiley depicts a horse communicator who can see into the equine mind); and one very sassy Jack Russell dog. Written with high spirits and enthusiasm, distinguished by Smiley's wry humor (as in Moo), the novel gallops into the home stretch without losing momentum. Fans of A Thousand Acres may feel that Smiley has deserted the realm of serious literature for suspense and romance, but this highly readable novel shows that she can perform in both genres with lan. 150,000 first printing; 15-city author tour; Random House audio.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Jane Smiley's insightful and good-humored novel about horseracing is heavily populated. Grooms, trainers, owners, gamblers--they're all warmly portrayed here, some honorable, some scoundrels, some two-legged, some four. Toren distinguishes all these characters, some of them with convincing foreign accents. What's more, she is one of the rare readers who manages to make a conversation sound like a conversation. Her characters actually seem to be listening to one another and reacting to the content of what is said. It takes a special brand of imagination and concentration to pull off such a feat. In this audiobook, so sly and clever, Toren's skill beautifully mirrors Smiley's rich portrayal of the denizens of the track. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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