Horse

Horse (2022)

By Geraldine Brooks

There are a handful of drawn-out characters in Horse. There is a white woman. There is a Black man. There is another Black man, circa 1850. There is a horse (also circa 1850). And there are a number of other well represented characters. 

Flip to the back of the book to get a glimpse of the author photo. It’s a white lady with a horse posing in a way that can only be described as White Lady With Horse or Old White Lady Recreating Senior Yearbook Photo. She looks very happy. The horse seems generally aware that its life could be worse than doing what this lady wants it to do, all things considered. You’ve more or less seen this photo before with a different horse and a different white lady. 

That’s all to say that, with only the most superficial information that I have so far provided, we might go back to that list of characters and say, White woman: sounds good. Horse: definitely, check. Black man: ehhhh. Black man, circa 1850: may I ask, why? 

I should say that I think Horse falls somewhere between a Good and Very Good book. It's engaging, flows from page to page, chapter to chapter, and is well-researched enough to put you into worlds where you are at the author’s mercy to hope the next step goes well for these characters that you have invested in. It takes place simultaneously in 2019 and the mid-1800’s with a little bit of 1950s New York art world scene thrown in for good measure. It hints at the connections between those timelines upfront and manages the back and forth without being clunky. 

Geraldine Brooks is from Australia, for what it’s worth, and she writes about American slavery not from the point of view of a conflicted American, but from a diligent and respectful researcher with a natural skill for storytelling. At the core of the story is a teenaged Black horse trainer whose horse becomes one of the most accomplished racing horses in American history to this day, so much so that he necessitated the invention of the stopwatch. 

The trials of this horse trainer are, as you might guess, brutal. They are made unique by the fact that he is the only one who can seemingly train this priceless horse, but that bond is twisted and perversed by some horrible white men and taken for granted by many white men whose empathy only goes as far as their imagination is willing to push the possibilities of human rights. 

There’s a sense of adventure in all this, and Brooks, through my eyes, handles it delicately and well, never letting you take your eye off the injustice. The relationship with the horse is perhaps a crutch to the character’s personality, but every time a hypothetical white reader is invited to use a white character as a stand in for themself, they are soon admonished: You are asked to realize, if you are intellectually capable of recognizing it, that the way you might be looking at this person and this horse is patronizing; what you want for him is different than what he deserves. 

All of this is balanced with a modern timeline in which one character recovers a painting of the horse, while another analyzes the bones of the horse. These two characters, one Black and one Australian begin a romance. This is handled delicately, as well, but you get a little more aware of that author photo in these moments. I certainly did not read anything that I thought could be interpreted as offensive, but this does read like White People Explaining Racism To White People, which is all well and good, but when it involves writing Black characters and creating words for them to say, it can seem, unfortunately, a tad patronizing, if well-intentioned.

Even if you feel you understand, it can be harder to convey what someone is going through when they are on the receiving end of a micro-aggression (and all the generations of trauma that is packed into that). It’s a bit more likely you’ll be able to nail the horrors of slavery 200 years later. 

That being said, this year, the U.S. Department of Defense ordered that Horse be removed from the U.S. Naval Academy's library because its content was “related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” And I should note that however you feel about the ending of this book, it is certainly a statement. 

Horse was better than I thought it would be. I was brainstorming who to recommend it to while I was reading it, to be honest. Ultimately, I get mad when I read a lazy book. Most books that exist are lazy, and as a reader you should be trying to avoid them. As a person who reads and recommends books, I get frustrated reading a lazy book knowing that people are wasting their time with it, believing things they shouldn’t be believing or getting bored when they could be enthralled. Brooks isn’t a lazy writer, and this book pulls off a lot of impressive things because of it. Most of all, it keeps you going. 

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Watch This Roy Hargrove Documentary

Last week, we took our six-week-old baby to see some kids from Booker T. Washington, the, local performing arts school, play jazz. About 20 minutes in, they played a Roy Hargrove tune - my wife recognized it in about four seconds. Hargrove attended Booker T. Washington in the late eighties (it’s where Wynton Marsalis discovered him). Seeing those kids - closer to my baby’s age than mine - still paying homage to their fallen alumni, made me emotional, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

I saw a screening of this documentary in 2022. It’s got a ton of great footage of Roy and all his great contemporaries offering perspective (probably a little too much Mos Def, if we’re being honest). It’s worth a watch. But more than anything, treat yourself to Roy’s music. He’s a bonafide prodigy, so his chops are on par with anyone, but albums like the RH Factor are extremely accessible to non-Jazz heads.