Lord of Misrule

Each year I make sure I read the National Book and Pulitzer Prize for fiction awards. It's good for me. It helps to stop my lazy inclination to read too much drivel. The winners of these two awards are always challenging - either because of content or style. Style is certainly the challenge of this year's National Book Award -- The Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon.

The Lord of Misrule revolves around a get-rich-quick-scheme -- horse trainer Tommy Hansel plans to slip in quietly at a backwoods West Virginia race track to run four good horses in claiming races at long odds and then slip out before anyone realizes.

Of course it doesn't work that way. Small racetracks are like small towns where everyone knows everyone's business (and if they don't know, they'll find ways to find out). And much of this short book revolves around how this plan falls apart. The strength of this book is Gordon's ability to recreate this 1970's dusty racetrack atmosphere along with a vivid set of eccentric characters.

That said, it's a challenging book to read. The dialogue is particularly tricky, it's hard to decipher the slang in places, and the plot can be difficult to follow (particularly if, like me, you know nothing about horse racing).

I'm tempted to say that in places the writing tries too hard, that it's overstyled but that is most likely my own fault for reading too fast. Gordon's sentences are meant to be read slowly and carefully. The characters seem too eccentric at times, crossing the line into caricature, and yet there's something magical that pulls the story along. There's something fascinating about watching a simple plan thwarted at every turn and wondering how it will all turn out.