Equestrian literature

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon won the National Book Award for Fiction last month. The book’s title is taken from the name of a horse at a seedy, fictional racetrack in West Virginia. As a novelist, Jaimy Gordon has been championed by a few during her years of obscurity, and was, as the New York Times acknowleges in their review, barely noticed by that august publication at all. The Times admits, however, that “this novel is so assured, exotic and uncategorizable, with such an unlikely provenance, that it arrives as an incontrovertible winner, a bona fide bolt from the blue. The story emerges from that hidden world—the backstretch of the racetrack—unknown to even most horse enthusiasts. It is authoritatively drawn by the author with imaginative characters and inspired dialog. The book is divided into four horseraces, the intrigue deriving not so much from the question of which horse will win but from murkier issues such as the rules of claiming races and the archane culture of the backstretch. Read more in Janet Maslin’s column in the New York Times.December 14, 2010

June 6, 2010Author Babette Cole describes her literary creation, Fetlocks Hall, as “A Very Unusual Pony School Where Extraordinary Things Happen.” Shades of Harry Potter’s alma mater, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Pony-mad Penny Simms, overjoyed at winning a place at Fetlocks Hall, soon discovers that she also has a chance to acquire secret knowledge about horses and the magical unicorn world of Equitopia. The requisite conflict between good and evil is provided by the struggle between the unicorns and the devlipeds, an adventure in which Penny soon becomes involved. Written for children aged eight to ten, Cole’s series has struck it big. Sales of her first two books, The Unicorn Princess and The Ghostly Blinkers, sold nearly nine thousand copies in the first week, according to Horse &Hound. Cole’s new series is published by Bloomsbury, the same publisher as Harry Potter. Unfortunately, political correctness there required the author to remove all references to hunting. “They now go team chasing instead,” said author Cole. To read the entire story, click here.