March 15 ~~ Review coming tomorrow.March 16 ~~ I gave this book four stars yesterday but while thinking over my reading experience before sitting to write this review I've dropped it down to three. The basic idea of the whole thing is compelling: follow the stories of certain Thoroughbred horses during their first three years of life. Will they turn out to be the horses they were expected to be? What kind of drama will surround them and their people? (Because there is always drama around a horse...

Just loved how Smiley contrasted thoroughbred racing horses - who are born to know what they love and what they are meant to do - with a whole gaggle of self-doubting, identity-conflicted humans. Funny, "sprawling" but controlled, lotsa anthropomorphism but no saccharine sentimentality. Smiley has an insider's knowledge of her milieu, but also respects and trusts her reader enough not to bog the story down in definition or description. Even though they are frequent, her race scenes are never bor...

Fascinating portrayal of the thoroughbred horseracing world.How does Jane Smiley do it? Her books are all completely unique. There is no formula; no predictability (you could say she is an anti-Ian McEwan). The story is set in the thoroughbred racing world of Southern California. The story, and the human beings involved are involving. But what set this book apart for me? Two of the main characters are animals. One of the racehorses, and, a dog. A Jack Russell Terrier to be more precise. And let

I'm not really sure how I feel about the book overall. It was excellent in many ways, but sort of pointless overall. It's a soap opera about horses & the people working with them on the track with a sort of beginning & a kind of end, but there was a lot of history & certainly life goes on after the book ends. The writing was good, engaging & yet there wasn't a single defined plot, so I got a bit lost at times. Toward the middle of the book, I almost gave it up due to characters musing & then it

Author Jane Smiley takes readers into the world of champion thoroughbred horse racing in her book, "Horse Heaven". The book is well written, although much too long. Written in the 1990's, the book was contemporary for its time. Now it seems a little like historical fiction with its references to then President Clinton's affair along with other 1990's cultural events of the period. For animal enthusiasts, part of the book's appeal is learning about the horses themselves and their lives. Justa Bob...

Let's get it out in the open. I love Horse Racing!!!! I have been to many of the tracks where Smiley sets her book, as well as many smaller locations where I swear the horses plow the north 40 in the day and race by night. But horse racing still remains the domaine of the rick, populated by horse people who train, groom and care for the horses. I think this is anther top flight effort by Smiley as she takes us month by month through the racing year. She is at her best when her months around 30 p...

Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley is a novel about horses and their breeders, owners, trainers, grooms, jockeys, traders, bettors and other turf-obsessed humans. It takes place over two-years and chronicles the lives of various horses and their people.I know a little about horses - that is to say I've ridden horses, been to riding competitions, and been to the race track - but I still found this book particularly hard to get into. You see nothing ever happens, there is no real plot. The entire novel i...

Jane Smiley's novel about horse racing is one of the best books I have read this summer. It was loaned to me by my sister-in-law, a horse woman herself and daughter of a horse woman. Jane Smiley owns a race horse or two and clearly knows plenty about the subject. A big part of the book's success is the way she makes the horses characters in the story as much as she does the humans.I knew nothing about the world of horse racing, except that people like to go to the races and bet money. I learned

an epic poem in prose . . . about horse racing.

I love the Dicken-esque structure of this novel. This is the first novel I have read by Smiley. I read her small bio of Dickens and thought it was a wonderful distillation of the man and his work; she had the fine sense to recognize Our Mutual Friend as perhaps his best work. With Horse Heaven she goes back her forebearers, Dickens, Fielding and Thackery and creates a novel that is worthy homage.One of the things I loved best about her book is the sly humor. There is one episode of quiet sly hum...

I fell in love with a race horse named Justa Bob...

Wonderful book. Smiley artfully made me care and worry about a character that never spoke a word - Justa Bob. She does it without ever anthropomorphizing him.

A rambling book with many evocative characters, human and equine, that will stick with me. I haven't cried over a book in a while but one particular scene was so wrenching that it had me sobbing as I read.

Review originally and more completely published at http://www.epinions.com/review/Horse_...I found Horse Heaven to be entirely too disjointed, jumping from unconnected event to unconnected character every few pages. Smiley did give all her animals very human qualities, making them as integral to the story as the actual human characters. At one point, we even ride around in Eileen the scrappy terrier’s mind, hearing her thoughts. The novel jumps from character to character. Some of these characte...

I enjoyed Horse Heaven so much that when I finished the last page, I turned back to the first.

This is my favourite Jane Smiley so far. It takes place over two years, and follows several American flat racing Thoroughbreds, their trainers, owners, jockeys and associated hangers-on. There are dirty training tactics, personal trials and tribulations, affairs, distressing animal abuse, big money deals and scams, betting ... and of course the thrill and beauty of the actual races and the horses that run them. It is typical of her other books that I've read in that it has a large cast of charac...

640 pages! Too long. I would have given it 5 stars, but for the length. It's about Thoroughbreds and owners and trainers and horses and love! Very enjoyable, but some of the characters were dropped at a point in the middle and then quickly reintroduced at the end. Some of the chapters felt like a New Yorker story. But, all in all, enjoyable.

Gone with the Wind for horses. FUN.

Part of me wants to say that this was just an interminable horse book, and that part of me is speaking with an honest voice (if a condescending and dismissive one). Smiley interweaves the tales of a central set of horses with the proliferating stories of owners, bettors, riders, trainers, breeders, etc., creating a kaleidoscopic effect as the reader glimpses the increasing patterns and events uniting them. Some parts seemed needlessly silly (a horse psychic?), others goofily erotic (not just the...

Fine novel by Jane Smiley, a favorite author. She gets inside the minds of the horses in a surprisingly believable way. Really enjoyed it.