I've always had a passing interest in everything horses (while still living in reality that Mom and Dad could never buy me a pony... but I could wish there was one out in the yard anyway!), so this works as a decent horse introduction, especially if you don't have the pleasure of being around horses every day and finding out all-things-horses on your own. This was consistently interesting. I feel like I've learned a ton about horses. Knowing more about horses will also make it easier to read Smiley's other books that I have a few of. ( )

This book is about the author's relationship with her horses. She keeps racehorses, so it's all about the workings of the racetrack too, from an inside perspective. The book centers on a handful of racehorses she has owned, their personalities and quirks, working with and training them, overcoming problems, trying to figure them out. Plus lots of interesting thoughts on human-animal relationships, communication, how horses sense and perceive things, and so on. I was a bit surprised not only at the subtle superstitions that prevail at the racetrack, but the use Smiley made of an animal communicator who claimed to be able to hear the horses' thoughts and relay them to the owner. I had difficulty believing this, although the communicator often told things that matched exactly with the horses' circumstance and behavior, that she could not have known otherwise. But the author herself sometimes stated things that contradicted her belief in this communicator, and claimed she didn't expect the reader to believe in it either. So there's that. All in all this book was a much more accessible, personable read about racing than for example, Seabiscuit. While it's not among my favorites (some parts dragged, especially the name-dropping) I'm keeping it on my shelf for future reads.

from the Dogear Diary ( )

Much of what happened during [a:Jane Smiley|1339|Jane Smiley|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1245100250p2/1339.jpg]'s [b:A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck|32099|A Year at the Races Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck|Jane Smiley|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168331511s/32099.jpg|32303] remains hidden from the reader. What's missing? Smiley describes betting on her own horses in small amounts a couple of times. Did she really spend a year at the races and never bet another horse? Did she really never lose a bet? Wish she would have told us! She describes herself as the mother of children, but we don't hear what happened to their father(s) or of their opinions of her involvement with the horses. Most middle-aged mothers' real life horse stories are fraught with arguments over horses and money. The difficulty of making time for horses when there is a household to care for, and children to rear is the story of every horsewoman's life who has ever raised a child, yet that story remains untold here. The story of the arguments, the decisions about time and money are absent here, leaving a hole at the middle of Smiley's account. We are privy to Smiley's reflections on various methods of horse training and her own horses' responses to the trainers Smiley's hired. She describes the short careers of two of her horses that were sent to the track, their trainer, and her relationship with that trainer. Her own involvement appears to be that of an owner who would drop in for her horses' races and an occasional morning work, but her insights are sincere and her concern for the horses rings equally true.She responds to (& appreciates) the routine and order of the backside of the track, but not to the cast of characters that populate it. The reader gets the impression that she didn't get to know these people well enough to make their stories part of her own story or her personal experience of horse racing, maybe she feels she's already written their story in [b:Horse Heaven|32226|Horse Heaven|Jane Smiley|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168378222s/32226.jpg|801323]?Which is a shame,because the insightfully drawn characters and relationships between them that she creates for her fiction are so much more fully drawn than the horses and race people she presented here in [b:A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck|32099|A Year at the Races Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck|Jane Smiley|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168331511s/32099.jpg|32303] . ( )

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