The Sport of Kings is probably best suited for horse lovers. For me, this attempt at a family saga failed, with over-long descriptions of landscapes, flashbacks to predictable family ancestral stories, lengthy digressions seemingly drawn straight from biology textbooks, and, most problematic of all, long racist rants where a short one would have sufficed to show the distasteful beliefs of the father and grandfather.
What’s left? Cruel parents, cruel husbands, cruel horse trainers, cruel people all around. Definitely not a Christmastime story.
FT's Books 