Geraldine Brooks, HORSE: A Novel
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[0:58]Geraldine Brooks is the author of Horse a novel Australian board Geraldine
[1:03]is an author and journalist you grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney
[1:07]She attended Bethlehem College Asheville and the University of Sydney
[1:10]She worked as a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald
[1:13]She won the George Shackleton Australian news correspondent scholarship and she was a journalism master's program
[1:19]attendee at Columbia University in New York City
[1:22]She worked for the Wall Street Journal
[1:23]She covered the Gulf War where she got an overseas press club award along with her husband Tony Horowitz and then
[1:30]was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel march
[1:34]Her novels people of the book K-loaves Crossing and the secret cord all were New York Times bestsellers
[1:40]Her first novel Year of Wonders is an international bestseller translated into more than 25 languages and currently option for limited series by Olivia
[1:48]Coleman's production company
[1:50]She is the author of the nonfiction works nine parts of desire foreign correspondence and the idea of home
[1:56]Brooks married fellow journalist and author Tony Horowitz
[1:59]Inturate so are loop France in 1984 and we're together until his sudden death in 2019
[2:05]Which we talked about they have two sons Nathaniel and B's you she now lives with a dog named bear and a marinade
[2:11]Valentine by an old mill pond on Martha's vineyard and spends as much time as she can in Australia in
[2:17]2016 she was named an officer in the order of Australia
[2:20]Welcome Geraldine. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss your
[2:25]beautiful and amazing new book called horse
[2:29]Well, it's great to be here
[2:30]I just was blown away by not only the writing of it
[2:35]but the intersection of all the stories and how the whole plot unfolded the whole way through and
[2:42]How you were able to get us to attach to characters in the present day
[2:46]But also go on this sort of mystery hunt for how this painting came to be in the world and then tie everything together
[2:53]It was bravo
[2:55]Well, thank you. Thank you. You know, it wasn't clear to me how it was all going to come together
[3:00]I had to sort of pick away
[3:03]at the stitching
[3:05]Bit by bit and just take it on trust that eventually I would find
[3:10]How these stories were going to connect, but it took quite a long time into the writing to get to the point
[3:17]So I was kind of hanging by my fingernails there
[3:21]And here I thought you had it all figured out from the first minute. So
[3:28]Would you mind telling listeners who aren't familiar with horse yet?
[3:31]What inspired you to write it and generally what it's about?
[3:35]Okay, so I became horse crazy in my mid 50s. This was this was the direction my midlife prices to
[3:43]And I got a horse and it was fairly comical because I didn't know what I was doing
[3:49]But in any case it became all I wanted to think about was this horse and learning to ride and learning about horse care
[3:56]And I wasn't getting any actual writing done and then luckily I just happened to be at a lunch at Plymouth
[4:05]Paltoxic Museum and there was an official from the Smithsonian there
[4:09]And he was regaling the table with the story of how he just delivered the skeleton of the most famous racehorse of the 19th century
[4:17]From an attic in natural history museum in Washington to the international museum of the horse in Kentucky
[4:24]And as he told the story of this horse's incredible career and then what happened to it during the Civil War
[4:30]My lunch was on it and I knew that I had my next book and that it would unite my
[4:38]New passion with actual productive labor so it saved the family finances
[4:47]Wow, did you ever see did you well first of all did you get to see the the skeleton?
[4:53]Oh, yes
[4:54]I went to Kentucky and you know
[4:56]Get a lot of research there about horses and horse breeding and falls and all the things that I've needed to know
[5:03]But I also went to the Smithsonian in Washington where they have the laboratory that prepped bonds the scientific study
[5:11]So that was such an extraordinary
[5:14]Research experience because the Smithsonian the museum that you see on the mall
[5:19]I just the tip of the tip of the iceberg and out in suburban Maryland. There is this
[5:25]My also campus where they have scientific research labs and storage pods for 98% of the collections that they
[5:34]Keep out there. So it is it's a chamber of treasures and
[5:38]Scientific wonders and it was just terrific to be there. I've spent a lot of time with the museum and actual history with all my kids doing classes there
[5:45]And everything else and I've had the opportunity to go back and see some you know the stock pile and you realize how
[5:52]Just how vast hearing about their collection and just the it's just insane how much material and
[6:00]History is stored there and offside and it's just amazing
[6:05]Yes, I was researching, you know, this is a multi-strand and novel and it's about
[6:12]It's about science and it's about a race horse and it's about art as well
[6:16]So I was researching how they would clean a painting and
[6:20]As well as how they clean bones which is actually done by a room full of domestic beetles
[6:27]that
[6:28]The bones claim which it's around it by all this high-tech scientific equipment
[6:34]But that's still the best way that they've come up with to clean bones
[6:38]Well, your novel yes is about a race horse
[6:41]But also about race and how that factors in to everything. I felt like
[6:47]It was hard to know reading if you were black or not black as an author because
[6:54]The experience that you gave to Theo and his whole even the littlest things like how
[7:01]He trains himself and Theo is one of the main characters in the present storyline
[7:07]When he gets these microaggression sort of held his way that he can
[7:11]You can see the flash of anger, but then he just like gets right over it and and moves on
[7:16]But he's long that he you know for his own
[7:20]Safety and well-being. He has to appear to get a yes
[7:24]I'm sorry. I misspoke. Yes. I'm in on externally the face. He changed the face to mask quickly and
[7:34]You see this obviously through to the end which I won't say anything, but you know
[7:39]How did you get into his character?
[7:42]Were you at all worried about writing from the point of view of a different race from your own and tell me about that?
[7:49]Yeah, I was I was terrified actually because
[7:53]I'm very aware of the discourse about
[7:56]Writing outside of your own identity that if I was going to write this book because
[8:02]The Black Horseman was so absolutely fundamental to the success of Lexington and to the thoroughbred industry in the 19th century
[8:11]Their skills and expertise
[8:14]Were plundered because most of these people were enslaved or formally enslaved by white owners who drew immense prestige and
[8:23]material wealth
[8:24]From the other breads because racing in the 19th century was huge
[8:29]It's it's hard to overstate what a national passionate was and it crossed class lines at cross racial lines
[8:36]But it was built on the and the skills of Black Horseman
[8:39]And I couldn't leave them out of the story. They were fundamental to this story
[8:44]So once you're telling that story
[8:47]You can't then if you're going to have a story that comes into the present time which I wanted to do around the science
[8:54]You can't just pretend that that all stopped in the 19th century and that racism is over and done with
[9:01]So I knew I was going to have to engage with it
[9:05]in the present story line as well. So I relied on them
[9:09]Absolute generosity and forbearance of Black friends who shared their experiences and
[9:16]To readily drafts and said that's crap
[9:22]I need to do this and you need to do that and I would just they were just you know
[9:26]I couldn't have written this book without them and I know how tiring it is
[9:32]To always be explaining our own racism
[9:35]Explain racism to my people
[9:38]So I was just really grateful but living here at Martha's Vineyard
[9:42]There's been a Black community coming here in the summers for a more than a century
[9:48]So I'm lucky that I've got to know some of the interesting people here and
[9:55]What I've learned is that no amount of education or affluence is going to protect
[10:00]do if your skin is black.
[10:02]And the most famous example is Professor Henry Lewis Gates.
[10:08]There's a summer resident here.
[10:10]And I think we all remember when he was dragged off
[10:12]his own porch in more region in handcuffs
[10:16]for committing the offense and trying to open his own front door.
[10:19]Unbelievable and crazy.
[10:21]And I just, I feel like he did such a wonderful job
[10:25]of putting the reader in the issues
[10:28]and letting us live life like that,
[10:31]changing everyone's vantage point into it.
[10:33]So I thought that was wonderful.
[10:35]I also, I love how Jess sees people now
[10:39]in terms of how their bones are put together.
[10:42]Like the comments you made early on to Theo about,
[10:44]oh, well, you must be able to run very well.
[10:46]Look at the mechanics of your legs, you know?
[10:49]I'm like, wow, maybe there's a reason why I'm not a great runner.
[10:53]It's not my willpower, it's my short legs, what do you know?
[10:56]What are you gonna do?
[10:57]I, so I want Jess to like give me some sort of excuse.
[11:02]Well, it was fun, it was fun creating Jess
[11:04]because I had so much research to do on the other characters
[11:09]that I got to give myself a break and base her on me.
[11:13]So she's socially awkward, nerdy.
[11:15]And she just loves the interior architecture of living things.
[11:22]So that's why she works in Austria preparation
[11:25]at the Smithsonian.
[11:26]She's just wonderful articulating them.
[11:29]So they show what the creature was like when it was alive.
[11:33]And so, yes, so when she looks at people,
[11:36]she's always seeing through the flesh to the bones.
[11:38]And she's very impressed by people
[11:41]who have excellent recreational ability.
[11:48]Oh, I love that.
[11:49]It's like, leave it to a good book
[11:50]to have you look at the world differently,
[11:52]even just joints.
[11:56]I was hoping to read this one paragraph
[12:00]from the afterward, if that's okay with you.
[12:02]You said, I started this novel
[12:04]with the encouragement of my husband, Tony Horowitz,
[12:07]the true historian and the family.
[12:08]He hadn't been crazy about my previous novelistic plunge
[12:11]into myth and biblical history,
[12:13]but thoroughly embraced my engagement
[12:15]with a more recent period he knew and loved.
[12:17]Often, a pertinent article or a promising source
[12:19]he had fared it out in land on my desk.
[12:21]Together with Bizu, we traveled to Kentucky
[12:23]where our research often intersected in intriguing ways
[12:26]as he followed the trail of Frederick Law Olmstead
[12:28]for his book, Spying on the South.
[12:31]Back home, Tony's quips would keep me on task
[12:33]if I procrastinated.
[12:34]Doesn't look like horses galloping to the finish line today.
[12:37]Tony died suddenly on book tour,
[12:40]not long after speaking to an enthusiastic audience
[12:42]at the Philson in Louisville, my partner in love and life,
[12:46]I miss him every day.
[12:49]I am so sorry.
[12:51]Yeah, now it's been a tough three years, really.
[12:54]And the first year I was just in shock and disbelief
[12:58]because we didn't know that he had anything wrong with his heart
[13:03]and he was a gen rat.
[13:05]He went to the gym maybe six times a week
[13:08]and he was probably in retrospect not very good for his heart.
[13:12]He used to get on the machines and watch Fox News
[13:15]to get ribbed up.
[13:17]He hated Fox News so much.
[13:20]And so anyway, he was very fit
[13:23]and it was just a total shock for me and the boys.
[13:26]So it's still clawing our way back.
[13:29]How is it trying to throw yourself
[13:31]into a massive intellectual project
[13:35]and finishing that while going through grief?
[13:37]Yeah, at first I couldn't focus at all.
[13:41]But eventually the book became the life
[13:44]book that I called into because I got some advice
[13:48]from a friend who had recently lost her husband
[13:51]and she got the advice from Ruth Baidigan's book
[13:56]who had said, do you work?
[13:59]It might not be your best work,
[14:01]but it'll be good work and it'll be what saves you.
[14:06]And it turned out it was and because Tony liked this idea
[14:12]so much and he'd been so instrumental in helping me
[14:16]with the research and the only stages of it.
[14:18]So I wanted to do a good of a job on it as I could
[14:24]because it was our last thing that we were able to do together.
[14:29]And so you wrote from the heart the scenes with grief
[14:35]that there were scenes involving grief on a macro level
[14:38]and maybe you were channeling that
[14:40]or was that already all written?
[14:42]No, all of that, all of that came later.
[14:46]So yeah, it affected the book,
[14:48]it affected the trajectory of the story immensely.
[14:52]And how do you go forward from here?
[14:55]What are the things you tell yourself
[14:57]when you're having like really tough days?
[14:59]And we don't have to talk about this anymore.
[15:00]Yeah, no, I rely on, you know, I've become a maniacal
[15:04]about work.
[15:06]I used to be a procrastinator and you know,
[15:09]I got in the garden to prune one little branch
[15:12]that was bugging me and I'd still be out there
[15:14]or I was like that I've just found that I want to be immersed
[15:18]in writing right now, it does seem to be the thing
[15:24]that helps the most.
[15:26]And how did you meet him originally?
[15:29]How did I meet Tony on that graduate school?
[15:32]You're both coming to Columbia University from other jobs.
[15:36]We've been out of college and I'd gone to work
[15:39]as a newspaper reporter in my hometown Sydney, Australia.
[15:42]And he'd gone to work as a labor organizer
[15:45]for a union of mostly black woodcutters in Mississippi.
[15:49]And that was a very stressful job.
[15:51]And also he realized it was gonna be a long slope
[15:55]to change the world that way.
[15:56]So he thought journalism might be a better path.
[16:00]So I loved his left-wing politics
[16:03]and I loved his tan forearms when he came back
[16:06]from spring break.
[16:07]He'd been making a documentary about the woodcutters
[16:10]in Mississippi and he had a gorgeous tan forearms.
[16:14]So I think that was what really got my attention.
[16:17]I think forearms are like a huge, you know,
[16:24]a barometer for the whole body.
[16:26]They're underrated, I think.
[16:28]Underrated, yes.
[16:30]I'll go up to the elbow.
[16:32]Men, start fine tuning your forearms, you know.
[16:38]Well, well, that's, I mean, so sad,
[16:41]but how wonderful he sounded really funny.
[16:43]And that's what I miss the most is the humor.
[16:47]He was hilarious.
[16:48]And thankfully we've still got his books.
[16:51]So the boys and I people out favorite bits
[16:53]and read them and get a real belly lot.
[16:56]And so it's great.
[16:58]We'll have that way of being able to connect with him.
[17:01]And hopefully one of your sons,
[17:03]maybe because the sense of humor is hoping they did.
[17:06]Oh, yeah.
[17:07]Oh, yeah.
[17:08]My youngest son is absolutely hilarious.
[17:11]My only one too, but the younger one's really,
[17:14]he's quick on his feet.
[17:18]So now with Horace in the world,
[17:21]what have people been responding to it
[17:23]the way you imagined or have there been surprising,
[17:28]has there been surprising feedback to you?
[17:30]What's it been like?
[17:31]I've been really grateful for the overall reception
[17:35]and the only blowback I've had is from the right,
[17:40]which I did not see that coming.
[17:43]But there's so much racism in this country.
[17:46]And so I've been getting, you know,
[17:48]some mail about being there to the police
[17:52]and that, you know, I don't want to speak specifically
[17:56]because these are plot points in the book.
[17:58]And, you know, I thought that, you know,
[18:00]I might have trouble from the other direction.
[18:03]So I welcome it, you know, I welcome this discussion.
[18:09]Do you miss being in this novel all the time?
[18:12]Or are you happy to lay it to rest and work on the next?
[18:15]Oh, no, I've already finished another project.
[18:18]So, oh my gosh.
[18:20]So it's just a shot that's really an extended essay
[18:24]that book is coming out in November and you try one, you know?
[18:29]No, I enjoy this part.
[18:31]Actually, it's really fun to get out and meet readers
[18:35]and booksellers, they're my people.
[18:37]And we've always stuck a learn in our rooms for ages.
[18:41]Well, as a novelist, you're always working a learn
[18:44]in your room better.
[18:45]My son just went that way, making faces.
[18:48]LAUGHTER
[18:50]Turns out this is family hour on our podcast today,
[18:52]so, you know, tell me about the book
[18:57]that's coming out in November.
[18:58]Oh, it's part of a series in Australia
[19:02]where they get one writer to appreciate the work of another.
[19:06]And so I have done one of my favorite Australian writers, Tim Winter.
[19:10]There's nowhere near as well known in this country as we should be.
[19:14]Interesting.
[19:15]And then what's coming after that?
[19:17]After that, I can't tell you it's a project
[19:19]that's very different and it's another nonfiction project.
[19:25]And I have to go to an island of the coast of Tasmania
[19:29]in order to do it.
[19:30]Whoa.
[19:31]OK.
[19:32]As I can say about that one, because it's very much still
[19:35]in an amorphous state.
[19:37]But then after that, I've got another historical novel.
[19:41]See, there you go, throwing yourself back into work, at least
[19:46]you're doing something that the rest of us can benefit from.
[19:49]Well, I hope so and enjoy, you know?
[19:52]So because I love a good book myself.
[19:54]So it's good to, you know, hopefully give other people
[19:58]the same pleasure that I guess.
[20:00]then I get lost in a book. Have you read anything greatly lately? Yeah, I loved it.
[20:06]Book of Sarah and Liz. I make it. Mason. Mason. Yeah, that was great. I love that.
[20:14]It's so unusual because it's a funny book about depression. Yeah. And then, you know,
[20:21]the last book that just blew my head off was the other story. Mm-hmm.
[20:26]I was, I'm still reeling from that one. Wonderful. I actually just wrote a memoir that came out
[20:32]in July all about my love of books. So I... Oh, what's it called? It's called bookends,
[20:38]and memoir of love, loss, and literature. Oh, wonderful. So, yeah. So, my homage to all the books
[20:46]in my life and all of that. So, love. But I turn to writing and reading and work when I am
[20:54]going through grief or loss or stress or, you know, pandemics or whatever. I think it is a,
[21:00]like it's a PG-rated escape. Yes. Anyway, well, I'm honored to have spoken to you. This book
[21:07]was such a masterpiece. I'm so glad I had time to read it and enjoy it and learn so much,
[21:13]and it was like a what it was such a wow to me. So, thank you so much. Well, thank you very much.
[21:20]I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you. And you'll see. And Mateo. There's a lot.
[21:29]Say the monkey. All right, take care. Bye. Bye-bye.
[21:33]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
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[21:47]every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
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