"Lord of Misrule" is a darkly realistic novel about a young woman living through a year of horse racing at a half-mile track in West Virginia, while everyone's best laid schemes keep going brutally wrong. With her first novel since her acclaimed "Bogeywoman" (1999), Jaimy Gordon bears comparison to other great writers of the American demimonde, such as Nathanael West, Damon Runyon, and Eudora Welty.
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Summary
"Lord of Misrule" is a darkly realistic novel about a young woman living through a year of horse racing at a half-mile track in West Virginia, while everyone's best laid schemes keep going brutally wrong. With her first novel since her acclaimed "Bogeywoman" (1999), Jaimy Gordon bears comparison to other great writers of the American demimonde, such as Nathanael West, Damon Runyon, and Eudora Welty.
Description
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
"Lord of Misrule" is a darkly realistic novel about a young woman living through a year of horse racing at a half-mile track in West Virginia, while everyone's best laid schemes keep going brutally wrong. With her first novel since her acclaimed "Bogeywoman" (1999), Jaimy Gordon bears comparison to other great writers of the American demimonde, such as Nathanael West, Damon Runyon, and Eudora Welty.-- "book cover"
Awards
Winner of the 2010 National Book Award for Fiction (US)
Critic Reviews
A long shot for the winner's circle, "Lord of Misrule" won this year's [2010] National Book Award in fiction. Although the book, the sixth by author Jaimy Gordon, was a decade in the making, it is a fast tour through the underbelly of the sport of kings - horse-racing. The rundown racetrack central to the story is a separate universe with its own codes and castes and Gordon, who teaches at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, vividly tells the story of the trainers, jockeys, grooms, railbirds and girlfriends in this land governed by money and luck. Gordon has created a cast of original characters, including the track's horses, which are each full of personality and lore. Gordon describes the full spectrum of hope and despair on race day: "All are reasonably clean for this race, scarred and gleaming dark bays of various shades and descriptions - the commonest run of racehorse, dirt cheap, bone sore and all more beautiful than chests of viols of inlaid rosewood and pear." - Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Jaimy Gordon was born in Baltimore, took degrees from Antioch College and Brown University, and now teaches at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and an Academy-Institute Award from the American Institute of Arts and Letters. In addition to three previous novels (Bogeywoman, She Drove Without Stopping, Shamp of the City-Solo), she has published poetry, plays, short stories, and essays. Other book publications include The Bend, The Lip, The
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