Sarah Maslin Nir is a journalist who tells us candidly of her upbringing as an outsider in New York’s socialite schools and summer beach homes, where riding horses gave her a personal identity which transcended social cultures. As a HORSE CRAZY teen she learnt to do stable work and ride, first on farm ponies, then in a school implausibly located in a several floors high building near Central Park. Her journey tracks the many horses from which she learned, including the massive Belgian draught horses stolidly plodding around Central Park, which she rode as a mounted police volunteer. From these she learned that even the Belgians love to gallop.
The breadth of horse and pony characters, and their owners, is amazing; we go from western trainer Monty Roberts to a supplier of stage Icelandic ponies, from an African-American couple running a riding school, the purpose of which is not to teach kids to ride, but to demonstrate that Harlem kids can lead other lives, to a Virginia woman foxhunter. We meet a woman in love with an Indian breed of horse, the Marwari (Google it and you will see the ears prick inwards), who rescued that breed from a post-colonial slump in popularity and now owns the largest herd outside India.
The author is also telling her own story – the story of breaking her back, of her family’s memory of escaping the Holocaust, of her relatives who didn’t understand a course of study not filled with law or medicine. What journalism gave her and what she decided to do after spending a year attending parties every night, and a year visiting spa breaks around the world: though the book doesn’t cover this, she spent another year investigating NYC’s nail salon industry and exploitative practices, gaining a Pulitzer nomination.
One of my favourite accounts in HORSE CRAZY is the inside look at horse transport by air, because the author homes in on the horse’s point of view, does the work and stands calming the scared horses as the plane lands. However, I enjoyed every single story, and it’s safe to say I saw the insides of a lot of horsey scenes that I otherwise would not. I’ve already been recommending this fascinating memoir when I was only halfway through, as this is the ultimate dip-into reading for horsey people like me, who want to pick up a book and put it down again, as was said about magazines. Sarah Maslin Nir has bared and shared her soul, and her soul is full of horses. I’ll be reading anything she writes.
In the bestselling tradition of works by such authors as Susan Orlean and Mary Roach, a New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist explores why so many people—including herself—are obsessed with horses.
It may surprise you to learn that there are over seven million horses in America—even more than when they were the only means of transportation—and nearly two million horse owners. Acclaimed journalist and avid equestrian Sarah Maslin Nir is one of them; she began riding horses when she was just two years old and hasn’t stopped since. Horse Crazy is a fascinating, funny, and moving love letter to these graceful animals and the people who—like her—are obsessed with them. It is also a coming-of-age story of Nir growing up an outsider within the world’s most elite inner circles, and finding her true north in horses.
Nir takes readers into the lesser-known corners of the riding world and profiles some of its most captivating figures. We meet Monty Roberts, the California trainer whose prowess earned him the nickname “the man who listens to horses,” and his pet deer; George and Ann Blair, who at their riding academy on a tiny island in Manhattan’s Harlem River seek to resurrect the erased legacy of the African American cowboy; and Francesca Kelly, whose love for an Indian nobleman shaped her life’s mission: to protect an endangered Indian breed of horse and bring them to America.
Woven into these compelling character studies, Nir shares her own moving personal narrative. She details her father’s harrowing tale of surviving the Holocaust, and describes an enchanted but deeply lonely upbringing in Manhattan, where horses became her family. She found them even in the middle of the city, in a stable disguised in an old townhouse and in Central Park, when she chased down truants as an auxiliary mounted patrol officer. And she speaks candidly of how horses have helped her overcome heartbreak and loss.
Infused with heart and wit, and with each chapter named after a horse Nir has loved, Horse Crazy is an unforgettable blend of beautifully written memoir and first-rate reporting.
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