The Book Club: Short book reviews from readers and staff include “Horse,” by Geraldine Brooks | Opinion

Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. Sure, you could read advertising blurbs on Amazon, but wouldn’t you be more likely to believe a neighbor with no skin in the game over a corporation being fed words by publishers? So in this new series, we are sharing these mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer? Email [email protected].

“This Other Eden,” by Paul Harding (W.W. Norton & Co.)

This novel is based on a true story of an isolated community founded by a former slave and his Irish-born wife on an island off the coast of Maine.  The few newcomers to the island are pretty eccentric by mainland standards, but they are embraced and made welcome by the island’s inhabitants.  Over generations, there is much intermarriage among the island’s inhabitants, with predictable results.  Also predictably, the mainland residents are wary of and hugely prejudiced against the islanders, not only for racial reasons but also for just being “different.” Finally, over a century after the community’s founding, the mainlanders intervene in the community from their sense of noble superiority, with tragic results. The writing about the islanders, their lives, their perspectives, and their relation to nature is so very lyrical that it often demands re-reading, to soak up and fully appreciate its beauty. — 3 1/2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver 

“Horse,” by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)

Brooks, the author of “People of the Book” (a must-read for bibliophiles) and “Caleb’s Crossing,” is a master of historical fiction, taking a few real-life characters and occurrences and creating lush, imaginative novels around them. In “Horse,” she takes the story of Lexington, a thoroughbred born in 1850s Kentucky; his Black handler, Jarrett; and an itinerant artist of racehorses and builds a can’t-put-it-down story set in the years before the Civil War split a nation. The parts of the book set in the past are spellbinding; it’s only when Brooks tries to tie it to modern-day Washington, D.C., and racial strife that it stumbles into disappointing predictability. Still, “Horse” crosses the finish line a winner. — 3 1/2 stars (out of 4); Barbara Ellis, The Denver Post

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