Bred to Win by William Kinsolving (2003-08-28) - Softcover

Long on plot and short on subtlety, this soap-operatic novel by the author of Raven and Born with the Century reads like a teleplay for a miniseries. Fifteen-year-old Annie Grebauer, born into a Kentucky family of impoverished, incestuous white trash, rescues from death a prize thoroughbred belonging to millionaire socialite horse breeder Sam Cumberland. She runs away to New York, learns about horse racing at Belmont, and thereafter rotates among glamorous lovers, horse farms and European countries, accumulating wealth, fame, thoroughbreds, surnames and scandals, but nonetheless preferring mucking out horse stalls to wearing mink coats and riding in limousines. Kinsolving depicts the international thoroughbred business and its socioeconomic hierarchy in quasi-Balzacian detail, injecting farfetched yet spicy subplots involving the Mafia underworld and Nazi war criminals. The contrived, formulaic plot relies on coincidences but improves considerably in the novel's less predictable second half, where symbolic parallels add psychological and literary sophistication. Kinsolving's likable heroine, high-minded and scurrilous, surprising and always human, is the novel's best asset. Movie rights to Warner Bros . ; Literary Guild main selection; Doubleday Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Saving the life of a racehorse owned by the handsome and wealthy Sam Cumberland is 15-year-old Annie Grebauer's entree into the exciting and often precarious world of thoroughbred horse racing. Through sheer determination and will, this child/woman, bred in a shack in the hills of Kentucky, becomes a force to be reckoned with, whether fighting for the man she loves or outsmarting a gangster with a vendetta. What makes this rags to riches story more memorable than many is the excellent way in which Kinsolving manages to tell the history of thoroughbred racing within a contemporary framework. The episodes of life at a breeding farm in France are particularly good, giving the reader an inside story that is obviously the result of painstaking research. While Annie's adventures strain the imagination, the book is still a page turner. Literary Guild main selection; Doubleday Book Club alternate; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/90.
-Lydia Burruel Johnson, Mesa P.L., Ariz.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.