The wealth of historical detail is an impressive element in Horse, and yet it is worn lightly. It is disturbing because of the extreme cruelty each young man endures, despite the historical distance between them and the marked contrast in their social and economic circumstances. The novel is daring because Brooks presents the action variously from the point of view of each of these men as the novel progresses (as well as several other characters, including an Australian curator). She draws a sustained comparison between the young horse trainer, Jarret, an enslaved man with a prodigious talent for horsemanship and an equally profound love for the animals, and Theo, a doctoral student at Georgetown and one-time Oxford polo player, who has a dog called Clancy and an immense knowledge of 19th century painting. Horse is a daring and disturbing novel, in that Brooks makes not one but two young African American men the central characters. Horse deftly reveals the long-term effects of history, depicting the continuities of the brutal treatment of African Americans in the United States during the era of slavery and its deadly manifestations today. These are animated through Brooks’ exquisite character construction. Indeed, this is a novel that explores and exposes real historical figures and actual conditions, events and forces.

As the reader discovers in the potted biographies of a dozen or so historical figures Brooks has provided, the scaffolding is a robust and complex structure. She refers to these elements as the “factual scaffolding” for her novel. Brooks offers a richly textured, intricately developed narrative about that magnificent horse, his trainer, the artist who painted them, and those who restored the skeleton of the great creature in a museum many years later.

Geraldine brooks