This novel is almost entirely set in the Illinois countryside at a stables. The family of parents, three boys and a girl live here. While dad goes out to work, mum breeds horses and takes riding lessons and all the children ride. Peter is given the best horse to ride and receives one-to-one tuition from Kate, his mum. She is so ambitious for Peter she misses that her youngest son is considering running away and another, John, is full of jealousy. Meanwhile the daughter is struggling to find her way in life and has returned from college after one term. Jane Smiley conveys how tough it is being a teenager excellently in this novel and the safe / suffocating atmosphere of home. The youngest son dares to cycle off their land, otherwise the only times we read about being away from their home is for a couple of horse shows. Kate is forceful and confident and single-minded and rarely likeable. The children seem well balanced considering but each has their own concerns. ( )

This is the story of the Karlson family. Kate and Axel and their daughter and three teenage sons live on a farm in Illinois, breeding and training horses for the equestrian community. However, Kate is obsessive in her focus and her children are forced through a grueling daily schedule prescribed by her. She believes it is good for them, saving them from the other teenage distractions. Her marriage is in name only, although Axel believes he still loves Kate and stays by her side but the annual gymkhana
held on their property brings family tensions to a head and results in a tragic event.
I believe this was Jane Smiley's first novel. It was good but the unrelenting coldness of the mother figure really cast a pall over the story for me. ( )

I am a big fan of Smiley because of her later novels. This first novel lacks polish in some places, but it has real grit and feeling. Yes it is set in an environment of horse competition, and has some details about that competition, but the scope and appeal of the book is not limited by that subject. ( )

A well-written story of a family caught in the spell of the mother's obsession and ambition. Shakespearean in its overtones. Kate, the mother and wife is blinded to all around her, husband's inner life and needs, children's actual aspiration and feelings, in her quest to produce a champion and make a name for herself in the equestrian world. With Kate in love with her own equine philosophies(she seems to have no inner or outer life that does not have to do with horses) and cocksure in her way of living and raising children, each family member must find way to survive in this virtual vacuum. Axel, Kate's husband is perhaps the most endearing of the characters. His sympathy for his children, especially his nurturing love for his daughter was beautifully developed. And yet, the thrall in which his wife holds him is more than he can defeat. The sturdy and defiant younger son is also interesting. As the book jacket will tell you, this is a tragedy. How the tragedy plays out is fairly easy to see early on. I suppose this book has so many things that would normally make this book a winner with me, however, I just liked it. I think my biggest challenges with it are that there seems to be little humor as I had expected from some of her other works, and then Kate casts such a chilly, bloodless pall over the entire story. ( )

A well-written story of a family caught in the spell of the mother's obsession and ambition. Shakespearean in its overtones. Kate, the mother and wife is blinded to all around her, husband's inner life and needs, children's actual aspiration and feelings, in her quest to produce a champion and make a name for herself in the equestrian world. With Kate in love with her own equine philosophies(she seems to have no inner or outer life that does not have to do with horses) and cocksure in her way of living and raising children, each family member must find way to survive in this virtual vacuum. Axel, Kate's husband is perhaps the most endearing of the characters. His sympathy for his children, especially his nurturing love for his daughter was beautifully developed. And yet, the thrall in which his wife holds him is more than he can defeat. The sturdy and defiant younger son is also interesting. As the book jacket will tell you, this is a tragedy. How the tragedy plays out is fairly easy to see early on. I suppose this book has so many things that would normally make this book a winner with me, however, I just liked it. I think my biggest challenges with it are that there seems to be little humor as I had expected from some of her other works, and then Kate casts such a chilly, bloodless pall over the entire story. ( )