Horse
Coming in strong in the #FictionIsRelevant game: Horse, by Geraldine Brooks.
I don’t often read fiction that does a deep dive into the mechanics of a particular topic. Example: a novel with a main character who’s a vintner & the book delves into intricate specifics of winemaking while also being a love story or something. In general, not interesting to me. I read to learn, but more on a higher-level, broad brush thematic scale. An exception might be Barbara Kingsolver, who incorporates the natural world into her fiction so well. Maybe it’s a “don’t be obvious” thing — I don’t like to read and think, “Oh, the author is trying to incorporate their research here.”
However, I was intrigued by the “topical mechanics” of Geraldine Brooks’ latest (widely praised) novel, Horse. It’s a time-shifting story that explores Black life in America, from slavery to contemporary police violence, using the thread of horse racing…and more specifically a painting of Lexington, a real Thoroughbred race horse that was also the most successful sire of the second half of the 19th century. (One of his foals was Preakness.) If you’ve ever read Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx, this is a similar “traveling object” tale.
Two #FictionisRelevant points of note:
* As soon as I finished Horse, I randomly stumbled across a NYT article about a YouTube documentary series that follows the shrinking population of Black grooms and trainers. It’s called “The Real Players Inside the Backstretch” and explores the “important but ever-diminishing role of African Americans in a sport they helped put on the map.” The main character in Horse is Jarrett, a Black groom who was indeed an actual person. The article didn’t mention Brooks or Horse, but the topic overlay is clear.
* The way that Brooks is able to weave together issues of class, race, and non-American backgrounds and the ways they intersect is like a subtle emergence, not a forceful announcement. Sometimes a forceful announcement is called for, but if my own reaction to the ending is any indication (no spoilers), she deftly courts the reader to an understanding better than a dry history text ever could.
#ReadingToLearn
originally published on instagram