Book Review: Seabiscuit, An American Legend

I'm going to go ahead and assume that most of you aren't fans of horse-racing, so trust me, I was skeptical too. When I opened up to the first page of the novel I was ready for a ton of description and waiting for the dialogue. I turned the page. The closest thing to dialogue in the whole novel was two lines long, but they both had the same speaker. I didn't like that, but then again, the novel is non-fiction.

The first three chapters or so were horrendous. Okay, you own cars and make more money than me... alright, you train horses... cool. Those were my thoughts. Hillenbrand first grabbed my attention by explaining all of the crazy things Jockeys did to stay in shape. Then my interest kind of went downhill. The story itself, in my opinion, was quite dull. However, Hillenbrand's writing made it worth while. Her ability to paint images in your head and force emotions upon you is quite amazing.

I couldn't care less about horse-racing, but Hillenbrand made Seabiscuit feel like a human being. After up and down and up and down in Seabiscuit's career I found myself wanting Seabiscuit to be cut a break. I'll let you find out what happens though :)

I believe the shining moment in Hillenbrand's writing was this paragraph: “The bell rang in Pollard's ears, and he felt Seabiscuit drop and push beneath him, hammering the track and powering forward. There was the rushing sound of seventy-five thousand voices and the tumbling motion of horses and the flight of wind and dirt and the airy unreal feeling of mass and gravity slipping away.” The emotions are rushing and you can feel yourself on the back of the horse. I loved it.

Though a skeptic at first, I now realize that Seabiscuit is more than a tale about a race-horse, it's a legendary tale about hope and perseverance. I'm glad I read it, but I will never read it again. If you don't like horse-racing you should still read it, but hang tight because the beginning of the story is going to be rough for you.

(Originally Written on August 31, 2011 at: http://dft.ba/-BSMeyers91 )