Horse, by Geraldine Brooks

 

I really enjoyed this book by Geraldine Brooks. She uses a style that was successful in People of the Book, writing from several viewpoints across centuries to slowly reveal and solve a historical mystery. She ties together an enslaved horse trainer, a famous 19th century racehorse, a painter known for his paintings of famous horses, several paintings of the racehorse (including some that have been missing), and a modern couple made up of a writer and art history graduate student and a biologist who specializes in anatomy. While I appreciated the author's attempts to not only tell the historical tale of what happened to the horse, the trainer, the paintings, etc., she weaves into the story some heavy-handed nods to social justice issues. These were clumsy at best, and didn't really add to the novel.