Lord of Misrule (Vintage Contemporaries) by Jaimy Gordon (Epub)

Description

A brilliant novel that captures the dusty, dark, and beautiful world of small-time horse racing, where trainers, jockeys, grooms and grifters vie for what little luck is offered at a run-down West Virginia track.

Tommy Hansel has a plan: run four horses, all better than they look on paper, at long odds at Indian Mound Downs, then grab the purse — or cash a bet — and run before anyone’s the wiser. At his side is Maggie Koderer, who finds herself powerfully drawn to the gorgeous, used up animals of the cheap track. She also lands in the cross-hairs of leading trainer Joe Dale Bigg. But as news of Tommy’s plan spreads, from veteran groom Medicine Ed, to loan shark Two-Tie, to Kidstuff the blacksmith, it’s Maggie, not Tommy or the handlers of legendary stakes horse Lord of Misrule, who will find what’s valuable in a world where everything has a price.

User’s Reviews

Review “Assured, exotic and uncategorizable… an incontrovertible winner, a bona fide bolt from the blue.”—The New York Times“A beautifully written novel…. Gordon has completely mastered the language of the racetrack.”—Jane Smiley, The Washington Post “Lord of Misrule is filled with memorable characters who exist on the fringe, making up a whole world …. Gordon’s language is so textured that her pages seem three-dimensional.” –Los Angeles Times “I was mesmerized. . . . Lord of Misrule beautifully captures language of the racetrack”—Andrew Beyer, The Daily Racing Form“Both richly literary and red-blooded in its depictions of the sporting life, Lord of Misrule gives readers several compelling races, including a completely unexpected but fitting finale.”—Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel“An exuberant, jazzy novel about rough characters — both equine and two-footed.”—The Plain Dealer “Gordon’s characters . . . are complex and finely drawn. . . . [Gordon] unspools a plot of corruption and intrigue.”—The New Yorker “Moody, poetic, darkly funny prose.”—Time “[A] magical tale about a dusty West Virginia town and its downtrodden racetrack.”—NPR “Unlike any novel you’ll read this year—and maybe next.”—Philadelphia Inquirer “A tour de force of energy and esprit.”—Kirkus, starred review “Moving and lyrical . . . [A] nearly word perfect novel”—Booklist “Gordon’s writing will grab and pull you in.”—Bloomberg News

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ One of the best books I have ever read. Having raced horses at the half mile tracks, I found this book a well written portrayal of life on the backstretch and a must read for anyone who is interested in horse racing.

⭐ I picked up this book after seeing it won the 2010 National Book Award for Fiction and although it started sort of slowly, it picked up a great deal about a quarter of the way through and finished fast! It was a very solid book albeit a bit different than most. The book gives you an in-depth look into the shadowy, Mafia-laden, complicated world of second-class horse racing. It takes place in a West Virginia track which must be the dustiest, dirtiest, scummiest place in America. A newcomer named Tommy Hansel shows up one day after sending ahead his sort of unsuspecting cohort Maggie to scope out the track. He brings with him 4 horses and has a plan to race all of them and capture the cash from unsuspecting bettors who think his horses are worse than they actually are. The book is divided into 4 chapters–each focusing on one of the horses and one race. You learn not just about how the trainers prep the horses but how the betting happens, who bets, and how they make money. You are introduced to shady characters named Two-Tie and Joe Dale Bigg and Kidstuff. Everyone has their own angle and method of cheating someone else out of hard earned money. A good book with a pretty good ending. A bit tough to get through as the language used approximates the language of the time and locale but once you get used to that you can move through the story much faster.

⭐ This book is a little hard to get into. After 100 pages I started over with a sheet of ruled paper & pen for writing down the characters names and a few identifying words. After that it was very rewarding. The characters are amazing, all different, all real. Each speaks in his or her own voice. You can hear them. The plot is forgettable, but the book is still good. In that way it is like reading Dickens: you remember the unique characters, not the story line. What author wouldn’t like to be compared with Dickens?I particularly like the way Jaimy Gordon transcribes the voice of the old Black groom. This man is illiterate. HIs words or thoughts are presented as an illiterate person might write them if he could write. We read the language as he hears it. Some words make sense only when we realize that they sound like a different word spoken carelessly. This recognition gives pleasure.

⭐ The novel involves cheap claiming horses at a rural racetrack in the 1970s. As a teenager, I groomed cheap claiming horses at rural racetracks in the 1970s. So on that level, I found the characters interesting, the story so-so. (I’d seen it all in real-life before.) I might have enjoyed the book more if the author hadn’t chosen to leave out quotation marks when characters spoke. I imagine there was some ‘artistic’ reason for this, but for me, it just made the story a little harder to follow and the book a little more work than it had to be.

⭐ For a book that won the National Book Award, I found it disappointing. It was confusing not having a quotation mark anywhere in the book ,I There was one sympathetic character, I culdn’t get into the others and am not into horse racing all. it wasn’t very interesting.

⭐ Backside track-talk authentic. Confusing due to the poorly formatted dialog. Hard to tell who is speaking without quote marks or he said, she said. Had to re-read paragraphs to understand what was going on. Sort of a sad tale told in riddles.

⭐ I was blown away by Gordon’s facility to pack into so few words such poignant and exquisite detail. I am (or was) ignorant of race tracks except by reputation, but this low-life picture of bondage, betting, doping, gangsterism, casual violence, and genuine love for horses evokes a world so compelling that I had to tell Gordon in person how much I was moved by this story. I particularly admire her portrait of Little Spinoza, the racehorse who won’t grow up, who’d rather watch the ducks on the pond instead of settling down to win the race. Wow.

⭐ Finally, a book that deserves the recognition it’s getting, the prestigious National Book Award, in this case. I mean this is simply one hell of a good read! The last time I was this riveted by a book about horse racing was probably when I was reading all those Black Stallion books by Walter Farley, and before that Marguerite Henry’s classic kid’s book, King of the Wind. And they were a loooong time ago. Oddly, the horses in Jaimy Gordon’s novel don’t really play such major roles as they did in those children’s books. Nope, this is is a book that concentrates on the people – the grotesques and misfits of the two-bit life of the dregs of the racing world. The grooms, trainers, jockeys and gofers and hangers-on at the low-level end of thoroughbred racing take center stage in LORD OF MISRULE, and they all come grittily alive as Gordon skilfully employs multiple points of view to tell the story. There’s Medicine Ed, the gimpy black groom whose family history with horses goes back a couple generations and who mixes spells and ‘goofer’ powders in hopes of gaining an edge for the horses he bets on. There’s buzz-cut lesbian Deucey who loves her old horses, Suitcase Vernon Smithers, and Two-Tie, the loan shark, who has been banned from the track at Indian Mound Downs, but who has his own kind of personal code of honor. There are various villains and many multifarious misfits represented here, but heroes would be hard to find. Perhaps the racetrack neophyte Maggie is a heroine, but seems more of a misfit. Her relationship with Tommy Hansel, a near-crazy dandy and womanizer, is dark, mysterious and bordering on sleazy, as the somewhat sado-masochistic nature of their ties become quickly evident.Because Gordon approaches her characters from nearly every angle, and makes masterful use of dialogue and interior monologue, they all become creepily real and the sensuous and dangerous relationships evolve expertly, luring the reader surely into this seedy world of used-up horses and fixed races. I didn’t know a whole lot about horseracing before reading this. Now I feel like I know something. The vernacular, the smell, the feel of it – this writer delivers it all. I’ve noticed some readers have whined that Gordon failed to use quotation marks for her dialogue, that it made the story hard to follow. I disagree. This ‘style’ worked fine for her. And she is not the first writer to dispense with such niceties of grammar or punctuation. I only recently saw the same stylistic device in a couple novels by South Dakota writer Kent Meyers, whose books have won a raft of awards. Complaining about something like this is nothing more than nit-picking, particularly in the face of a literary achievement like Gordon’s.Every character here, misfit and villain alike, is perfectly realized. A particular favorite of mine was Two-Tie (Maggie’s erstwhile ‘Uncle Rudy’), with his fastidious and fussy ways of an old bachelor, whose only love is his dog, Elizabeth, an aging and arthritic German Shepherd. The description of the dog’s descent of stairs (“reared back a little and let down the two in front, bump, then came the two behind, da-bump”) and of her being “more of a thinker, not a athlete, nutting like one of those idiot fox-running dogs, all yap and slobber …” will immediately grab dog folks. For me it brought to mind the dog/man relationship expressed so perfectly in J.R. Ackerley’s wonderful memoir, MY DOG TULIP.Most of all, this is a feat – and a feast – of story-telling. Jaimy Gordon had me from page one, and she didn’t let go until the very last page. These are compelling characters, every strange one of them. Put aside some time when you read this book, because once you start it you won’t want to put it down. I didn’t want it to end, but she even managed to end it in a way that left me feeling satisfied, thinking, ‘yeah, that’s exactly what would happen.’ – Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

⭐ I think I would have been best prepared for this book if I had read it sitting as a fly on the wall in some older gentlemen’s club, with cigar smoke, soiled shirts, and crumb covered counters apparent. However, I read this sitting in my comfortable couch or in bed, snuggled up to pillows, with my nice even clean heat and soft throws warming me during the cold winter. I tend to be straightforward, and optimistic about everything – so this book did not start out as one I could usually relate to.My straightforwardness made it tough to follow the ‘void of quotation marks’ dialogue. As characters switched back and forth, I wasn’t sure who was saying or thinking what. And then there were the dark parts. I am a fairly knowledgable horse person, acquainted with both riding and racing, so aware of the heartbreak that can exist when involved with horses. But any heartache I experienced had been in years past – many years past. Unfortunately I also foolishly assumed this was a present day tale, which was confusing to me. Aware towards the end that it takes place a good 40 years ago, it now falls into place.Groom Medicine Ed is the observer for this story, and the fellow I would most like to know in real life…have always wanted to know what really goes on 24/7 in a barn at the track, albeit this locale is much seedier than those I wish to know. He stands just the right amount of distance from the rest – enough to observe what really goes on. The author follows the pursuits of the young trainer Tommy, and his girlfriend, Maggie – both examples of typically understood racetrack figures – she hopeful and looking for the best, he – looking for an advantage – in all things. Their paths cross other racing characters – most with few redeeming qualities.For me, the book dragged during the beginning while I floundered about, until I fell into its rhythm, at which point I knew I would have to return to reread and appreciate it again. Some parts, many parts, were disturbing, but thankfully rather than center on the agony in each uncomfortable situation, Ms. Gordon paints a frank portrayal, and then moves on to the next thought or moment. Perhaps guiding us along past the pain to go on in our lives as well.What separates this book however, are the descriptions of these thoughts or moments – colorful, succinct and easily imaginable. Perfectly painted. Which is why, having just finished the book, I keep looking around for the person who has just lit up in my smoke free house. The horse smells, however, are welcome.

⭐ This was an enjoyable read. Did the author come from West Virginia? There were many things that only a West Virginian would know.

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