Girls, I Am Telling You, The South Is Just As Bad In The Twentieth Century, As It Was In The Nineteenth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                    This novel has been called by some the most daring of the year.  I am not so sure about that, but it is one of the most compelling and readable.  "The Sport Of Kings" takes place during the mid-part of the Twentieth Century--when integration and civil rights were starting to rear their heads as social issues--but, I am telling you, this novel has everything--father and son hatred, a nympho maniacal mother who carries on with Mandingo black bucks, (as does her daughter, who follows her) a horse breeding plantation in Kentucky, a Mandingo who is murdered, another who burns down the plantation, while the daughter who carries on with him also has an incestuous relationship with her father, and is punished for her sins!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                     What I am describing may sound like the campiest thing since "Hurry, Sundown;" a grandiose amalgamation of Tennessee Williams at his most Gothic, but, believe me, it's not.  There is quite a bit of carefully researched scientific facts about raising and breeding horses, descriptions of birthings, geldings, and the reality of the horse world beyond Elizabeth Taylor in "National Velvet."

                                     "The Sport Of Kings" is a family saga, the kind that completely engrosses the reader, and one where the author's writing style is so serious, clear, and literate it transcends any potential campiness or excess.

                                        Its breadth and scope took my breath away.  I relished every page, and could see it ending up on my Ten Best list.  Read it, girl, and it may end up on yours.

                                        "'Jes' a few mo' days, for to tote duh weary load,
                                          No more, t'will never be light."