new horse racing book (Lord of Misrule)

[ravenclaw]

I was looking over the list of fiction nominees for the National Book Award and one of them is about horse racing. From the National Book Award website:

Lord of Misrule
by Jaimy Gordon

ABOUT THE BOOK

Thoroughbred horse trainer Tommy Hansel has a scheme to rescue his failing operation by shipping four unclassed horses to Indian Mound Downs, run them in cheap claimers at long odds, and then get out fast before anyone notices. The problem is, at this rundown riverfront half-mile racetrack in the West Virginia panhandle, everybody notices from the start -– Kidstuff the farrier, track super Smithers, an old groom Medicine Ed, gypsy owner Deucey Gifford, eventually even the ruled-off bookmaker Two-Tie, and an ominous trainer, Joe Dale Bigg. But no-one factors in Hansel’s go-for girlfriend, Margaret Koderer. Much like the beautiful, used-up, tragic creatures she comes to love, Maggie is almost a force of nature, an adventuress with enough personal magnetism to spin everyone’s sure thing right back to the source of all luck.

Lord of Misrule is a darkly realistic novel about a young woman living through a year of horse racing while everyone’s best laid plans go brutally wrong.

Sounds good! :yes: I don’t think it has been released yet. Barnes & Noble’s website says it is available November 2010.

[LaurieB]

I didn’t get much past the first sentence of the synopsis. What are “unclassed horses”?

[Acertainsmile]

[QUOTE=LaurieB;5157909]
I didn’t get much past the first sentence of the synopsis. What are “unclassed horses”? [/QUOTE]

Not too mention some of the names…although remembering some of the nick names of people I’ve known, maybe it’s not to far fetched!

And ya gotta love the name of the track, too funny!

[KBEquine]

I’m sure at some point I’ll buy it & read it, but I wonder if it is set in the present or the past . . . the names are very “the past” & I’m with Laurierace on the “unclassed horses” & hoping for the protagonists’ sake that past or present, there’s slots money at the run down track, or the plan is bound to fail!

And yet like I said, I’ll buy it & read it. I just can’t help myself.

[EponaRoan]

I always thought a sort of backside Peyton Place book would be awesome. Because the backside really is a little Peyton Place. :lol:

[Foxtrot_s]

Just give Jilly Cooper a call - she’d do a great backstretch novel.

[ravenclaw]

I found an old interview with Jaimy Gordon (the author). She worked at half-mile racetracks for 3 years before she went to college. She’s in her 60’s now. So she has some real-world experience.

Here’s a review of the book from Kirkus:

A novel of luck, pluck, farce and above all horse racing—not at tony and elegant sites like Churchill Downs and Ascot but rather at a rinky-dink racetrack in Indian Mound Downs, W.Va.

Gordon (Bogeywoman, 1999, etc.) clearly loves the subculture of grifters and ne’er-do-wells whose lives center on a venue that obviously has never and will never bring them success. Her lowlifes have names like Two-Tie, Medicine Ed, Kidstuff and Deucey, and they’re capable of speaking a kind of racetrack patois occasionally reminiscent of Damon Runyon characters: “So I want you should write me a race, well, not me personally, fellow from Nebraska, kid I used to know back when—actually I used to know his mother…She was very good to me. Alas, I fear I did not return the favor like I should have.” At the center of the novel is Tommy Hansel, a horse trainer with a get-rich-quick scheme that he feels cannot fail. He plans to enter “sure-fire” winners in claiming races, benefit from the long odds, then get out of town quickly. Nothing, of course, goes according to plan, especially since everyone seems on to his scheme, and the horses aren’t as cooperative as Tommy would like them to be. Complicating the issue is the quirky, intelligent Maggie Koderer, new to the horse-race business but nonetheless Tommy’s love. Maggie is college-educated but is drawn to the seamy underbelly of the track and the broken-down beauty of the horses. Gordon structures the narrative around the four horses, the last best hope being Lord of Misrule, and she seamlessly moves the reader from one narrative consciousness to another without being manipulative or intrusive. The writing about the races themselves is a tour de force of energy and esprit. By the end of the novel none of the characters quite have what they want, but most of them get what they deserve.

Exceptional writing and idiosyncratic characters make this an engaging read.

[LaurieB]

@ravenclaw;5159532

Exceptional writing and idiosyncratic characters make this an engaging read.

That’s a rave from Kirkus.

[Lamb_Chop]

I want it, I want it, I want it.

Thanks for the heads-up!