Horse

"Brooks' chronological and cross disciplinary leaps are thrilling . . . Horse is really a book about the power and pain of words . . . Lexington is ennobled by art and science, and roars back from obscurity to achieve the high status of metaphor." - The New York Times Book Review

" A sweeping tale . . . fluid, masterful storytelling . . . Brooks writes about our present in such a way that the tangled roots of history, just beneath the story, are both subtle and undeniable . . . Horse is a reminder of the simple, primal power an author can summon by creating characters readers care about and telling a story about them the same power that so terrifies the people so desperately trying to get Toni Morrison banned from their children's reading lists." - Maggie Shipstead, The Washington Post

"In her thrilling new novel Horse, Geraldine Brooks moves back and forth between the 19th century and the near present with the same practiced ease she displayed in her 2008 epic People of the Book . . . Brooks has an almost clairvoyant ability to conjure up the textures of the past and of each character's inner life . . . Her felicitous, economical style and flawless pacing carries us briskly yet unhurriedly along. And the novel's alternating narratives, by suspending time, also intensify suspense." - Wall Street Journal

"Every character is carefully and believably explored, including Lexington, the horse, an excellent racehorse and one of the best sires, ever, whose closest relationship is with his enslaved caretaker and exercise rider, whose insights into Lexington are spectacular. There is plenty of drama, given the era 1850s, but Brooks handles it perfectly. She also reveals a lot about racing art and biological science. Best horse book I've ever read, including all of my own." - Jane Smiley, The New York Times Book Review

" A deft novel . . . creates a picture of the artistic, athletic, and scientific passions that horses can inspire in humans." - The New Yorker

"Horse isn't just an animal story it's a moving narrative about race and art." - TIME