Horse by Geraldine Brooks is a historical fiction about horses, art, science, love, and racism. The novel is beautifully written with each word used as a brush stroke to paint the canvas of the mind. The story had me right at the start, where a series of events links the past to the present through a horse using art and science. The story is told in three timelines 1850s, 1950s, and 2019. The novel does an incredible job of linking the past to the present. The 1850s timeline is where the majority of the book takes place and is the most interesting period. Jarret and his love for the horse is infectious. Jarret is a slave and the horse Lexington the fastest racehorse of his time. They both just want to break free one on the race track and one in life. Their bond and understanding of one another is the heart of the book. The pacing of the book is great as the scientist and the art researcher learn more about the past we see what they are speculating about. The book is broken down into slice-of-life and research. The longest chapter is maybe 15 pages which makes the book easy to consume. The ending wasn’t as satisfying as I wanted. The third act has a shocking scene that I feel went too far and did not need to be in this novel to still make its point about racism in America. Up until the third act the book was balanced on Art, history, science, and racism. Then the book focuses on mainly racism. This book was a five-star book for me until that moment. The writing is still amazing but ruined by being perfect, by going to the extreme and out of the left field, the scene made the point but did not serve the narrative. Geraldine Brooks is an incredible writer (she won the Pulitzer for March – which looks at the Father from Little Women during the Civil War) I can not wait to read another one of her works. Horse by Geraldine Brooks was published on June 14, 2022, by Viking.

Plot Summary: Theo a Nigerian researcher who is a writer for the Smithsonian magazine has helped a woman whose husband has recently passed. The woman needs help but would never ask for it. She thinks Theo has an agenda to steal, but he helps her bring out items to sell and insists he take something for his trouble, he takes a dirty horse painting and wants to do a piece on finding the value of old paintings. Jess is an Australian scientist who researches bones and gets assigned to find old horse bones in the attic of The Smithsonian simply marked Horse. Jess and Theo’s research is intertwined as they want to know more about the horse. In 1850 years before the Civil War a free black horse jockey and his son Jarret a slave boy his dad was teaching to become a horseman had just been given a horse that was bred for racing. Jarret saw this horse being the ticket to being free with the winnings his dad could make he could buy Jarret’s freedom. Jarret turns the horse into the greatest racing horse anyone has ever seen. But with racial tensions rising and bylaws that can’t have a black owner racing, the racehorse has got to get stolen and he and Jarret are a package deal. A young horse painter recognizes the greatness in the horse and how special the horse and Jarret are and starts painting them throughout the years and war. Jess and Theo find out the incredible story about Jarret and the Horse Lexington, the mystery of the paintings, how many exist, and how much they are worth.

What I Liked: The story is essentially a mystery involving science and art, and it was so interesting. The writing is amazing the characters and the setting all feel so real. The history was done well and I feel like I learned so much about art, science, and horses. I liked that the character of Jarret kept self-educating himself at every instance. I liked how intertwined Jarret and Lexington’s stories are both are abused, and used by people who owned them, and both just want to be free. I loved how the past and the present are linked throughout. I liked the message on race being we’ve come so far, but still have so many ways to go. I liked how famed painter Jackson Pollock entered the story. I loved the ending of Jarret’s and Lexington’s story while in the Civil War, it reminded me slightly of the movie War Horse. The horse races are described really well made me easily visualize them.

What I Disliked: I felt the interracial relationship between Jess and Theo could have been a lot stronger. I could have seen them have fewer conversations on race and more of them as individuals, it was hammered in that race divided them but what drove them together? The third act plot twist, the book is about subtle racism or better yet racism as a way to control and keep the powerful in power. The third act changes it to, If you are Black you will never be safe in America. which is fine the book was going in one way with its theme then switched it to the extreme. It felt like it was there more for shock value than to add to the narrative of the story.

Recommendations: Horse is a very good story written in a very interesting way. I loved so much of this novel. If you are a fan of the play and movie War Horse then you will love this book. If you love and appreciate horses then this book will make you love them even more. If you are curious about the skeletons how we move and what it takes to make skeletons for museum displays. Despite the bad third-act turn that did not work for me this is a great book that was on track to be my best of reads for the year and still might, Horse is that good.

Rating: I rated Horse by Geraldine Brooks 4 out of 5 stars. I will definitely be reading another Geraldine Brooks book. After having read Little Women a couple of years ago I’m intrigued by the Pulitzer Prize winning March and will add that to my to-be-read pile.