It takes a great deal of faith to gear a novel this horse-besotted to the general public. Horse love is one of those things either you get or you don't, and for the vast majority of the populace, horse stories tend to read like porn written for 13-year-old girls. The good news, then, is that while a love of all things equine is not a prerequisite for enjoying Jane Smiley's Horse Heaven, a love of human perversity is. Racing, after all, is at worst a dangerous, asset-devouring folly and at best an anachronism, as one of her horse trainers notes: The Industry Leaders had made it their personal mission to bring horse racing to the attention of the general public, with the NFL as their model and television as their medium of choice, which was fine with Farley, though his own view was that horse racing out at the track, newspaper reading, still photography, placing bets in person, and writing thank-you notes by hand were all related activities, and football, ESPN, video, on-line betting, and not writing thank-you notes at all were another set of related activities. A crucial piece of information for Smiley fans is that, among her many novels, Horse Heaven most resembles Moo. (And there's even a pig!) In fact, with these two books it appears that this versatile author has finally found a home in which to unpack her impressive gifts: that is, the sprawling, intricately plotted satirical novel. Her target in this case is not academia but horse racing--less commonly satirized but, here at least, just as fruitfully so. Wickedly knowing, dryly comic, the result is as much fun to read as it must have been to write.

None of which means that Horse Heaven is a casual read. For starters, one practically needs a racing form to keep track of its characters, particularly when their stories begin to overlap and converge in increasingly unlikely and pleasing ways. Perhaps it says something about the novel that the easiest figures to follow are the horses themselves: loutish Epic Steam, the "monster" colt; the winsome filly Residual; supernaturally focused Limitless; and trembling little Froney's Sis. And that's not to forget Horse Heaven's single most prepossessing character, Justa Bob--a little swaybacked, a little ewe-necked, but possessed of a fine sense of humor and an abiding disdain for winning races by anything but a nose.

Then there are the humans, including but not limited to socialite Rosalind Maybrick, her husband Al (who manufactures "giant heavy metal objects" in "distant impoverished nationlike locations"), a Zen trainer, a crooked trainer, a rapper named Ho Ho Ice Chill, an animal psychic, and a futurist scholar, as well as attendant jockeys, grooms, and hangers-on. (Not to mention poor, ironically named Joy, a few years out of Moo U and still having problems relating.) It's a little frustrating to watch this cast come and go and fight for Smiley's attention; you glimpse them so vividly, and then they disappear for another hundred pages, and it breaks your heart.

But there are certainly worse problems a novel could have than characters to whom you grow overattached. A plot this convoluted would be one, if only it weren't so hard to stop reading. There are elements of magic realism, astounding coincidences, unabashed anthropomorphism. (At one point--while Justa Bob throws himself against his stall in sorrow at leaving his owner's tiny, wordless mother behind--this reviewer cried, "Shameless!" even as she began to tear up.) Improbably, it all works. Horse Heaven is a great, joyous, big-hearted entertainment, a stakes winner by any measure, and for both horse lovers and fans of Smiley's dry, character-based wit, a cause for celebration on par with winning the Triple Crown. --Mary Park


From Publishers Weekly
The Chinese calendar aside, 2000 may be the Year of the Horse. Almost neck and neck with Alyson Hagy's Keeneland, this novel about horses and their breeders, owners, trainers, grooms, jockeys, traders, bettors and other turf-obsessed humans is another winner. Smiley, it turns out, knows a prodigious amount about Thoroughbreds, and she is as good at describing the stages of their lives, their temperaments and personalities as she is in chronicling the ambitions, financial windfalls and ruins, love affairs, partings and reconciliations of her large cast of human characters. With settings that range from California and Kentucky to Paris, the novel covers two years in which the players vie with each other to produce a mount that can win high-stakes races. Readers will discover that hundreds of things can go wrong with a horse, from breeding through birth, training and racing, and that every race has variables and hazards that can produce danger and death, as well as the loss of millions of dollars. (A scene in which one horse stumbles and sets off a chain reaction of carnage is heartbreaking.) Characters who plan, scheme, connive and yearn for a winner include several greedy, impetuous millionaires and their wives; one trainer who is a model of rectitude, and another who has found Jesus but is crooked to the core; two preadolescent, horse-obsessed kids; a knockout black woman whose beauty is the entrance key to the racing world; the horses themselves (cleverly, Smiley depicts a horse communicator who can see into the equine mind); and one very sassy Jack Russell dog. Written with high spirits and enthusiasm, distinguished by Smiley's wry humor (as in Moo), the novel gallops into the home stretch without losing momentum. Fans of A Thousand Acres may feel that Smiley has deserted the realm of serious literature for suspense and romance, but this highly readable novel shows that she can perform in both genres with ?lan. 150,000 first printing; 15-city author tour; Random House audio. (Apr.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Smiley, author of nine earlier works of fiction including The Age of Grief and A Thousand Acres (a Pulitzer Prize winner), has written the Gone with the Wind of horse books. Those involved in the equestrian world will experience a thrill of recognition when hearing about the various types of trainers, owners, and, of course, the horses themselves. The trainers include a Zen practitioner who considers each horse a koan to be solved; a crooked trainer who gets religion and repents, however briefly; and a married trainer who falls in love with the wife of an owner. The horses are a rogue stallion, a timid mare, and an amazingly focused gelding named Limitless. The horses and people are both talented and flawed yet all find redemption. Mary Beth Hurt is an exceptional reader. Highly recommended for all public libraries.APatsy Gray, Huntsville P.L., AL Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Bill Barich
There's a benign deity at the helm in Smiley's world. Her final chapters have a wonderful restorative quality, filled with grace notes and epiphanies that offer a fitting close to this smart, warmhearted, winning book.


From AudioFile
A sometimes biting, sometimes tender exploration of the world of horse racing and the people and horses whose lives orbit it, Jane Smiley's ultimately hopeful vision offers all the thrills of watching a pack of thoroughbreds fly down the final stretch. Reader Mary Beth Hurt's enthusiastic performance is addictive, and she's especially distinctive when she's portraying characters like loudmouthed owner and breeder Al Maybrick or boorish trainer Buddy Crawford. None of the emotional states she portrays, however, from high-pitched falseness to self-assured hustling, is keener than when she's a lover, or a husband, or a wife murmuring those deepest yearnings of the human heart. J.M.D.-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Smiley's horses almost steal the show from the humans in this symphonic celebration of the byzantine world of thoroughbred horse racing--although a mischievous Jack Russell terrier named Eileen rules supreme whenever the all-seeing narrative eye pans her way. And she's easy to remember. Smiley challenges her readers by introducing new characters in nearly every chapter, from rich and troubled owners to eccentric and troubled trainers; nervous fillies and scampish stallions; a boy with the gift for picking winners; an articulate, horse-crazy 11-year-old girl; a gorgeous store clerk who catches the eye of a wealthy rap star then goes horse-crazy; horse-crazy Irish cousins; an animal communicator who can tune into a horse's stream of consciousness; a kind horse masseur; a calm and creative veterinarian; and a young mother trying valiantly to run her grandfather's stud farm. The list goes on and on, bewilderingly so, and, like a rebellious colt in training, it takes a while for this many-faceted tale to settle down. But eventually, like horse and rider, book and reader do establish a rapport and find a rhythm, and all the disparate story lines start to connect. Meanwhile, Smiley enriches her electrifying and at times melodramatic tale of two years on the thoroughbred racing circuit with a wealth of intimate knowledge about horse breeding, training, and racing, not to mention sensuous description and supple human and equine psychology. And there's more. As involved in metaphysics as she in horse racing, Smiley explores a Zen approach to life, a giving over to chance and the quest for balance between obsession and detachment. This is indeed a big, busy, book, but there is peace at its center. Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
A fast-paced, fetchingly detailed, wide-angled view of the world of horse breeding-and-racingand another lively illustration of Smiley's industrious literary work-ethic and gift for transmuting the products of her obviously extensive research into compelling fiction. The encyclopedic storysimilar in structure and rhythm to such earlier Smiley successes as A Thousand Acres and the comic romp Moospans two years (199799) and various Kentucky, California, and foreign locales occupied and frequented by the performers, trainers, moneymen, and aficionados thrust together by their common passion for the sport of kings. West Coast multimillionaire Kyle Tompkins, for example, bankrolls the development of can't-miss racehorse Limitless, honed to competitive perfection by skilled trainer Farley Brown and Farley's ardent protge and assistant trainer Joy Gorham. Several other groupings of characters (human and animal) shed varying lightrather as in a Robert Altman filmon such rituals of the sport as auctioning horses, doctoring and birthing and betting on them, and, in several cases, seeking some form of ultimate communion or identification with them. Some of the more intriguing of Smileys many characters include adulterous Westchester County matron Rosalind Maybrick (and her petulant Jack Russell terrier Eileen), 60-ish free spirit Elizabeth Zada (who claims she can read horses' minds), preadolescent Audrey Schmidt (whose love for equine creatures may or may not stimulate similar feelings for teenaged jockey Roberto Acevedo, andin the neatest surpriseveteran gelding Justa Bob (to whose impulses and even thoughts we are made privy), whose excellent track record and stud-worthiness fortuitously affect his life span. The anthropomorphism occasionally verges on feyness (``In reviewing his life after . . . [Justa Bob] developed a painful crack in his right hoof front wall . . . ). But there are few such missteps, and in general the story prances along right smartly. Several horses here are given such names as Nureyev, Lorenzo de Medici, and Ivan Boesky. If one named Jane Smiley ever shows up in the racing form, you might just want to bet the farm on her. (First printing of 150,000; Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection/Quality Paperback Book Club selection)-- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
To horse racing and baseball fans alike, spring is the season to get reacquainted with their heroes; it is the time to grab a scorecard, place a few bets, and head to the nearest dusty expanse of grass. Most of all, it's the time to dream, because on a baseball diamond or a horse track anything is possible. Judging by her magnificent new novel, Horse Heaven, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley understands this fact. With utter authority and aplomb, her seventh novel opens up the world of horse racing as never before; it takes us on a circuit from Del Mar to Saratoga and back again, bringing to life the owners, the trainers, and (most humorously) the horses themselves. While Horse Heaven is likely to be the definitive novel about horse racing, it is more than just a well-researched sojourn in this nervy world. It is a meditation on how we gamble at life's racetrack, wagering most cautiously when that bet is for happiness.

To tell this epic tale (it has nearly three dozen characters), Smiley employs an unusual narrative strategy: She sets the dramas of her human characters against the backdrop of those of her horses. We meet and get to know every horse in an intimate way, from Justabob, an imperious stallion with anger management issues, to Epic Steam, an ornery black stud with a heart the size of a Volkswagen. They are affectionate when loved, truculent when provoked, and mournful when they lose a friend on the road to the big leagues. With their steaming, muscled flanks and armies of helpers, these horses know they're important. But all they really want is a scratch behind the ear, plenty of hay, and maybe a nicker and a nuzzle or two. The same could be said for their attendants.

Though they desire the same thing as their thoroughbreds -- to win a little, and to be loved more -- Smiley's human cast are a hapless lot. There's the tycoon Al Maybrick, who has his own anger management issues and a drinking habit he barely keeps in check. Al and his trophy wife, Rosalind, take up horses as a hobby, but soon the horses become a repository for the hopes Al used to have for his marriage. Indeed, Al goes to the track to escape the fact that he and his wife don't relate anymore, while Rosalind goes shopping for expensive tchotchkes. But it's not just the owners who throw their dreams into horses. Married for 25 years to an agoraphobic woman, Al's trainer, Dick Winterson, spends most of his time at the track because he finds his horses' expectations easier to live up to than those of his wife. When he and Rosalind meet up, Winterson realizes that he's been missing something essential in his life away from the stalls.

While Smiley's characters differ in their particular domestic maladies, they are united in their love of horses. But until they encounter each other in the right way, they can't achieve the happiness they continually seek on the track. Smiley does a wonderful job of weaving together these two themes -- horses and happiness -- showing us that, as in horse racing, there is no true secret to happiness. As one avid gambler says, "It's a mystery that can't be plumbed by the form, by the theories, by any known science and it happens every day." But is winning -- or happiness, for that matter -- worth striving for? Tossing in the towel, another of Smiley's characters muses, "Wasn't the lesson of racing that there was no meaning, no pattern, nothing except chaos daily engaged with?" Winning at horses and winning at marriage, one concludes, are patterns of organizing chaos within ourselves.

As in her previous novels A Thousand Acres, Moo, and The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, Jane Smiley strikes a sublime balance between levity and gravity in Horse Heaven, making us laugh one moment and ponder where we should place our heaviest wagers during the next. Yes, Jane Smiley is out of the gate once again, leading the field of contemporary novelists with long, effortless strides. And thanks to Horse Heaven, we now know why the grass on a horse track oval appears so hopefully green. (John Freeman)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Spanning two years on the circuit, from Kentucky and California to New York and Paris, Horse Heaven puts us among trainers and track brats, horse-obsessed girls, nervy jockeys, billionaire owners and restless wives. Here is the trainer of dazzling integrity and his opposite: a wicked prince of the tract, headed for still another swindle; here are the gamblers and hangers-on. And in an amazing feat of imagination, here are the magnificent Thoroughbreds themselves, from the filly orphaned at birth to the brown horse who always wins by a nose, a lovable "claimer" who passes from owner to owner on a heartwrenching journey down from the winner's circle.

All the constant excitement of racing courses through a novel that opens up a fascinating world even as it moves us with its exploration of wanting, loving, and striving; of our mysterious bond with animals; and, above all, of our profound desire to connect-emotionally, sexually, spiritually-with each other.

SYNOPSIS

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

"A WISE, SPIRITED NOVEL . . . [IN WHICH] SMILEY PLUMBS THE WONDROUSLY
STRANGE WORLD OF HORSE RACING." --People

"ONE OF THE PREMIER NOVELISTS OF HER GENERATION, possessed of a mastery
of craft and an uncompromising vision that grow more powerful with each
book . . .

FROM THE CRITICS

Sally Eckhoff - Wall Street Journal

The tension and frustration of the racing life can be waring in Horse Heaven, and yet Ms. Smiley dispenses happiness at the novel's conclusion. Her skill at psychological probing is splendid; her images...a colt's nostrils round and open like the blossoms of a fox glove are even better.

Ms. Jane Smiley's chunky book Horse Heaven resembles a bale of hay. Chewable, fragrant and thick, this is the good stuff, the first cutting.

Don McLeese - Book: The Magazine for the Reading Life

As chance and destiny head into the homestretch, Smiley's novel offers plenty of surprise for those readers who are attentive enough to keep the various characters distinctly in mind while unraveling a myriad of subplots. By the end, as in a marathon, the suspense over who'll win is secondary to the satisfaction of finishing.

Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction

A "wordy," "interesting journey" through the universe of horse racing is revealed in this novel that spans two years on the circuit, from Kentucky to California to New York and Paris. The "wide range of characters" "sucked readers in fast out of the gate." While it "raced to the finish," other reviewers said it was "predictable" and "in the final stretch, a good filly, but not great."

Publishers Weekly

The Chinese calendar aside, 2000 may be the Year of the Horse. Almost neck and neck with Alyson Hagy's Keeneland, this novel about horses and their breeders, owners, trainers, grooms, jockeys, traders, bettors and other turf-obsessed humans is another winner. Smiley, it turns out, knows a prodigious amount about Thoroughbreds, and she is as good at describing the stages of their lives, their temperaments and personalities as she is in chronicling the ambitions, financial windfalls and ruins, love affairs, partings and reconciliations of her large cast of human characters. With settings that range from California and Kentucky to Paris, the novel covers two years in which the players vie with each other to produce a mount that can win high-stakes races. Readers will discover that hundreds of things can go wrong with a horse, from breeding through birth, training and racing, and that every race has variables and hazards that can produce danger and death, as well as the loss of millions of dollars. (A scene in which one horse stumbles and sets off a chain reaction of carnage is heartbreaking.) Characters who plan, scheme, connive and yearn for a winner include several greedy, impetuous millionaires and their wives; one trainer who is a model of rectitude, and another who has found Jesus but is crooked to the core; two preadolescent, horse-obsessed kids; a knockout black woman whose beauty is the entrance key to the racing world; the horses themselves (cleverly, Smiley depicts a horse communicator who can see into the equine mind); and one very sassy Jack Russell dog. Written with high spirits and enthusiasm, distinguished by Smiley's wry humor (as in Moo), the novel gallops into the home stretch without losing momentum. Fans of A Thousand Acres may feel that Smiley has deserted the realm of serious literature for suspense and romance, but this highly readable novel shows that she can perform in both genres with lan. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal