Blood Horses

…Review of John Jeremiah Sullivan's 2004 memoir about his sportswriter father: here because it is not food or local, nor quite places along the way but does relate to work I have done and a significant part of my life that I strangely and perhaps illogically avoid (Welsh Notes and next generation horse/pony pictures excepted).

Sullivan's British publisher, Random House, clearly took note and has now released his first book, Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son, which came out in the States in 2004. It takes just one subject,...Writing a successful book about horses is no easy feat, as Sullivan points out on a couple of occasions. "Beasts do not make good protagonists," he notes early on, "for the simple reason that unless you are younger than 10 or have money riding on their success or failure, it is hard to identify with them fully." Sullivan follows the example of others and weaves in stories of "human beings whose fates run more or less parallel to the track". In his case, it is most prominently his father, Mike Sullivan....Blood Horses also details the journey of thoroughbreds from the Middle East to the west. 

Blood Horses by John Jeremiah Sullivan – review | Books | The Observer