Poured Over: Geraldine Brooks on Horse

“You know, Marlon James said something once, he said, if you’re going to write about the enslaved, and you’re not going to write about the resilience, and the brilliance, and the incredible ability to make a life in a brutal system, a life full of love and some joy, then he said, he’s not interested in reading that book.”

 Geraldine Brooks, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, March, is known for her moving historical novels. Her latest, Horse, is a stunning new novel that transports readers between 1850s Kentucky and the present day following a legendary thoroughbred racehorse named Lexington.

Geraldine joins us on the show to talk about the real-world experiences of her unforgettable characters and why we still talk about slavery, growing up on the mindset that books are food, reading poetry before writing as part of her creative process, her literary influences and so much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.

Featured Books:

Horse by Geraldine Brooks

March by Geraldine Brooks

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

The Island of Adventure by Enid Blyton

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.

Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:

B&N: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Geraldine Brooks is here today. And I’ve been reading her for quite some time and actually Nine Parts of Desire, which was her first book. And her first work of nonfiction is my first time reading Geraldine. And that was more than a minute ago. But you probably know her best from her historical novels, Among the March, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and People of the Book and Caleb’s Crossing and Year of Wonders and The Secret Court. But Horse is just out. And that’s really the book we’re going to focus on today. But Geraldine, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over.

Geraldine Brooks: Well, it’s a pleasure to be with you, Miwa.

B&N: So I was listening to your Boyer lectures, which you did for the Australian broadcast company in 2011, as part of my prep for this interview, and you have this amazing line that I think really helps us set up Horse. And it’s from the final lecture, and it’s called a home and fiction. And you say, someone rises up out of the grave and begins to talk to me until they do I do not have a book. Often the voices that speak to me are the voices of the unheard. And this leads us to Jarrett who is one of the biggest voices in Horse, but I’m going to ask you to set up Horse a little bit. And then we’re going to come back to Jarrett, but that line is so perfect for this book.

GB: So Horse is based on the true story of the actual racehorse named Lexington, who was the most famous racehorse of his decade in the 1850s. And he was so fast this horse that he broke every record and they invented the mass produce stopwatch, because people were so interested in his races and 20 30,000 people would turn out to watch him run. And so I heard about him quite by accident, I was at a lunch and there was a gentleman from the Smithsonian, who was regaling his lunch made about having just delivered the skeleton of Lexington from the Museum in Washington, to the International Museum of the horse and Kentucky. And as he was telling the story of this horse, when he got up to what happened to the horse in the Civil War. I knew that day that I had found the subject for my next book. You know, it’s a braided narrative, because I’m interested in the Smithsonian Science and I always love poking around and unusual occupation. So I got very interested in the people who prep bones at the Smithsonian. So there’s a contemporary story. That’s the story of the horse. And then there’s a strange veer off into the art world of post World War Two New York and the birth of abstract expressionism.

B&N: And I will say, though, that that veering off into the art world will make perfect sense to readers of this book, because there is a painting at the heart of all of this. But the reason I wanted to open with that line from the Boyer lecture is because Jarrett, who’s the horses handler, and his trainer, I guess you’d call it, horses are not quite my thing. But Jarrett is this wonderful, wonderful character in 1850s, Kentucky, he is enslaved. And this horse that goes on to become Lexington is really his heart and soul.

GB: One of the things I discovered as I started to research the story of this horse, was the significance of the black horsemen of the period, their skills, their expertise, their abilities, in training, and in racing, and being brilliant jockeys, really was the foundation of the racing establishment of the day. And I have to say that racing was a very big deal. At that time in American history, everybody was involved in it. This place was still pretty much an agrarian society. So people just raised their own horses, and they were enthralled at the match races between the fastest horses and it was a matter of huge prestige, not to mention huge amounts of money. And it was largely built on the backs of enslaved people whose labor was plundered in order to keep this industry going. And when I learned about these incredible Black horsemen, some of them are documented, some not so much. But the character of Jarrett is inspired by a last painting of Lexington and it’s supposed to be the best painting that was ever done of him. And it’s been described in words but it nobody knows where it is. And it’s Lexington in as a senior Horse in his old age being led by black Jarrett, his groom, and I tried to find out more about who that person might have been. But I couldn’t. So I based him on the lives of some other better documented trainers who were also involved with Lexington. But he was my own heard voice. The real Jarrett didn’t have a chance to be celebrated for his expertise. So I’ve done that for him.

B&N: And you started riding in your 50s.

GB: Yeah, I don’t recommend it. It was my midlife crisis.

B&N: I don’t know that seems like a pretty great midlife crisis. And probably, you know, a little more time in the fresh air than maybe if you were driving a sports car.

GB: But probably just as perilous.

B&N: But want to bring it up because it’s charming. But also, when did you start writing Horse?

GB: The idea for Horse came at a fortuitous moment because anybody who’s ever fallen in thrall to horses will know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s like a craziness that overcomes your mania. And it’s all you want to think about. And it’s all you want to do. And it’s all you want to spend your time on. So I ended up with my own horse. My whole life was about that I wasn’t getting any work done on the novel I was supposed to be writing and people who are involved with horses will also tell you it is not the cheapest hobby you could possibly have. I was saved from the poorhouse by coming across this story of Lexington so I could combine my passion for horses with my actual day job. And all my research could be satisfying my horse lust but also find its way into the book.

B&N: And in past interviews, you’ve talked about how you do your research, actually, as you go along, as you find that you need a piece of information.

GB: Yeah, I want this story to drive the train. I don’t want to be cramming some interesting tips into the book just because I found it, you know, just because I was lucky enough to oh, this manuscript, what an interesting story. Let’s jam that right in there. Because I don’t think that works. I think you have to let the story tell you what you need to know.

B&N: I really love how you described your research as scaffolding. As you build your story. I think that’s a really wonderful metaphor. But when you were starting to write Horse, and you do have these three narratives and these three separate timeframes, and you’ve got sort of four main characters, you’ve got Theo and Jess and 2019. You’ve got Jarrett in 1850. And you’ve got Martha in 1954. And she represents the art world. But did it start with Jarrett? And then you sort of figured out where you needed to go next?

GB: Yeah, no, I thought, Oh, great. I can write a story about a horse. So that was where it started thinking about, you know, the science around the horses skeleton and then finding out about the paintings. But once I started writing about the horse, then of course, I learned about the contribution of the black horsemen. And when I started writing at the Smithsonian, there was a painting of the horse and I was looking at the painting and I learned that it had come to the Smithsonian in this bequest from the estate of Martha Jackson, who was a radical art gallery owner and a pioneering woman in that field in New York and a great supporter and promoter of the edgiest contemporary artists of her day. She was a friend of Jackson Pollock and De Kooning and Bridget Riley, and they say she invented the time up art. And so she left a lot of works to the Smithsonian, except they’re all edgy contemporary art, except this one painting is 1850s realist portrait of Lexington. Why did she have that? And that really started my novelists wheel spinning, trying to think of a reason why this dedicated contemporary art maven had this 1/19 century painting in her collection.

B&N: You’d done something similar with the structure in people of the book where you cut between the present day, and at the time, what was the future? And then you sort of also went back in time to the 1400s. But what’s the connection between 1850 and 2019?

GB: Initially, it was just because I wanted to, I wanted an excuse to look into the labs of the Smithsonian. And I have to tell you, the museum support center out in Maryland is a world of wonders. It is miles and miles Have interconnected labs and museum storage. And you’re standing there watching how they evaluate a painting and clean and painting. And in the hall, while you that works going on goes by the head of a triceratops, and then going the other direction, there’s a VanDyke masterpiece, and then going the other direction as a Chinese bridal carriage. So it’s just an incredible place, I wanted the excuse to have a character who lived in that world. And I had such a good time out there. And the scientists that was so generous, we went to the bug room where they actually use beetles to clean bonds, because for all the high tech science they’ve got out there, the beetles do a better job than any chemical process can do. So that was what I thought it’s just going to be interesting science in the way that the book conservator in people of the book was interesting science to me that once I got deeper into the story of Jarrett, and the black horsemen and enslavement in the pre Civil War, period, I realized that I couldn’t just leave racial injustice in the past. You know, I had to reflect on its echoes in the present. I was writing at a time when the jackhammer of the Trump White House was just in my head every day, and George Floyd and ahmaud arbery and the instinct that some people have to say, why do we have to keep talking about slavery that’s been over and done, it’s not over. And so that had to bleed into the present story, too.

B&N: Theo is pursuing a PhD in art history. He is writing for the Smithsonian Magazine, he’s he’s sniffed out the story of this painting, and he’s doing what he can, and he and Jess end up having a nice thing. But their meet cute is Jess accusing Theo of stealing her mountain bike, while trying to.

GB: Well, she doesn’t blurt it out, because she doesn’t want to be that woman. But it’s in her mind, and he knows what she’s thinking. So they have the same bike, and she jumps to that racist conclusion. And then she’s full of self loathing, of course, and mortified and embarrassed. But he’s the one who has to bear that kind of crap every single day, you know, I wanted to reflect the experience of many of my friends, because it doesn’t matter. If you skip gates, you can still be hauled off in handcuffs, trying to enter your own house, on the way home from a trip. And that reality is what black people live with every day.

B&N: And when you’re working on a book, like Horse with these three separate narratives, are you writing each section and then putting them together? Are you letting the story lead you through? And if you need to flip back to a different era, that’s what you do? Or if you need to flip forward? That’s what you do.

GB: I think, you know, I was writing it basically chronologically, but I was finding out things and ferreting out connections the whole way. And I really wasn’t sure what I was doing. You know, I love what my friend who’s a sculptor, Sarah Z. Somebody asked her about her process when they were profiling her in the New Yorker. And I’ve always loved what she said. She said, My process and she gave a big laugh. And she said, My process is mess, mess, mess, mess, art. And it’s also true, you know, it is such a mess, until it isn’t. And this book was such a mess. And hopefully it isn’t anymore.

B&N: Oh, it’s definitely not.

GB: But you know, the encouraging thing about thinking about writing or creating anything in that way is you can make a mess every day. You can’t make art every day. You know, maybe Michelangelo could make art every day, but he probably made a mess on the way as well. And that’s encouraging and it takes away any excuse for not doing your work because there’s no reason you can’t go to your desk and make a mess.

B&N: So what was the biggest surprise for you then as you were making this mess? I mean, you’re not entirely sure where you’re going. There had to have been at least a couple of moments where you were delighted to see what happened on the page.

GB: Well, I guess the most sustained messy that was trying to figure out there are three paintings that are important in this book, and trying to figure out a trajectory for each of them. That would be in Interesting. And when I finally got it, that was my eureka moment.

B&N: And it’s a really great moment for readers too. I’m glad it was a great moment for you. It’s really satisfying when you get to it in the book. But I mean, part of what you are talking about is not just race, it’s also money, and class and the amount of wealth that is represented by these paintings by the races by the facilities that are built up.

GB: Unbelievable, you know, I had no idea going into this was an industry it was, you know, because these days, we’re all, you know, a little troubled by the fate of horses, in the horse racing industry and animal welfare. And you know, we’ve turned away from it, and we’re not an agrarian society anymore. So it’s very much a minority thing now, but it was huge. And even President Andrew Jackson, that old bastard, who was racing his horse in Washington, DC, and you know, he had incredible black expertise, caring for his horses as well. Foregrounding those men and they were all men in this case was very important to me, because so much wealth built off of their backs their labor, that plundered labor. And I just think it’s really important to remember how much of the wealth of this country came from them.

B&N: At one point, Jarret’s father, who’s also a trainer, a well known trainer of horses, has to decide between buying his sons freedom, and the freedom of the woman he loves, and would like to marry, and he can’t afford to buy freedom for everyone in his family, and his son is, Jarret is sold with the horse. Because his expertise is recognized for being significant. But he’s sold with a horse.

GB: It’s such a brutal system, and there’s no turning away from that. And I think that we have to keep confronting it again and again, and keep remembering it. At the same time. You know, Marlon James said something once, he said, if you’re going to write about the enslaved, and you’re not going to write about the resilience, and the brilliance, and the incredible ability to make a life in a brutal system, a life full of love and some joy, then he said, He’s not interested in reading that book. And so I wanted to do that too, to show how brilliantly these men navigated the terrible situation they found themselves in. And within the constraints of this brutal system, they actually built lives that was significant and meaningful.

B&N: And Jarret learns to read and write. And he’s in contact with the previous family, whom he’d been living with in Kentucky, and the daughter of that family comes to him and says, Well, you should just come home to Kentucky, you should just come home, leave the horse there, come home to Kentucky, and that is not an option.

GB: At that point, he is just as on his last nerve with white people telling him what’s best for him. And I think at a couple of points in the novel, he just puts his foot down and blows them off and says, you know, I’m making my own life here. Thank you very much.

B&N: And almost 200 years later, that’s happening to Theo still. And it seems like every time we start to make progress, as a society, and as a culture, we run into walls.

GB: It’s reaction, you know, so you have the Civil War and Reconstruction. And the reaction is Jim Crow. We have eight years of Obama, and what do we have the reaction is Trump and the rise of white supremacists being enabled by the megaphone of the White House. So you know, I think, unfortunately, we make progress. And now we have to be thrown back. And, you know, we’re seeing it now as we revert to some kind of Gilead with the Supreme Court, wanting to take control of women’s bodies and women’s lives.

B&N: This isn’t the first time you have been deep into the Civil War and the issues around the Civil War, March, which you won the Pulitzer Prize for in it was published in 2005. But you won the 2006 Pulitzer. That’s how the cycle works for them, right. So it’s been a minute since March and that’s built off of This deeply American Classic Little Women March is his dad and he’s gone to the Civil War. What was it like for you, though, going back? I mean, obviously, I’m talking about two pieces of fiction, but you still are immersed in those books as you’re writing them. So what’s that like for you going back and saying, Oh, wait, here’s something new I learned or, oh, yeah, that’s something I’m going to leave behind. Because that’s just not the case. I mean, it’s 15 years later.

GB: Unbeknownst to me, I wound up married to a civil war obsessive. So my late husband, Tony Horwitz, was completely enthralled with every aspect of the Civil War, which I learned, to my dismay, when we moved to Virginia, after about 10 years of marriage, and suddenly, you know, every weekend was visiting another civil war site. I realized that I would have to find a way to connect with this interest of his, I’ll become a complete shell and never get out of the car, you know. So I was very intrigued by the idea of what happens to idealists who go to war, believing deeply in a cause, you know, and we’ve seen that in any number of wars, but the Civil War, particularly abolitionists, and in the little rural village that we were then living in, it was a Quaker village. And during the war, it was the only village in Virginia that raised a regiment that fought on the union side, and it was made up of young Quaker men who found slavery or worse, evil and violence. And they were read out of their Quaker meeting for taking up arms, but they just felt so strongly that they had to do it. And I often thought about those young men and wondered, well, yes, but what happened when they found themselves in morally perilous situations and at moral hazard as everybody who goes to all at one point or another is bound to do so what happens to your ideals when they’re tested in that way? And so you know, that was that was what animated March really, and Mr. March is, was a great found object, because we’ve been told by Louisa May Alcott, that he went to war, because of his ardent belief in abolition.

B&N: You were a foreign correspondent for a number of years, and you have covered war in the Balkans, you have covered war in the Middle East, you have covered uprisings, you have covered a lot of difficult moments in people’s lives. And, you know, I’m wondering how much that has informed the work that you do when you’re writing fiction. I mean, you’ve talked about how it impacted sort of how you built the world of Year of Wonders, which is the novel about the bubonic plague in England, in the 1600s. And I’m wondering how that carries over when you’re writing about the Civil War, because you are, in fact, Australian, by birth.

GB: You know, I don’t think I could write the novels, any of them without those experiences that I had, in the 10 years, when I was just jumping into people’s lives, often at the worst possible moment, asking them to share that with me. So the intense emotions, the incredible stress, finding out who you are in a time of crisis, whether it’s going to lead you to a better self, or a worse self, all of those experiences, and then seeing how people could be changed by catastrophe, you know, particularly women who had had, perhaps a restricted or a protected kind of domestic life suddenly having to step out and either pick up arms themselves, or lead their families to safety and dangerous, dangerous situations. So seeing how people could grow and change gave me confidence in letting my characters grow and change. I feel like I’m still living off those experiences in my fiction, even today, and just, you know, even in a material way, if you’re going to describe battle fields, I don’t think that was tremendously significant difference between the battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg, and the one I saw in the Iran-Iraq war where it was teenaged boys walking into fields of fire, inflicted by other teenage boys. I mean, the weapons are different, but the effect on the human body is exactly the same. The fear is the same. Being a foreign correspondent was absolutely essential to everything I’ve done since.

B&N: What do you love most about writing historical fiction?

GB: I like the implausibility of the truth that these things actually happened because if you can make up any thing. To me, it’s not as interesting as if something completely unlikely, really happened like a village took the unique decision to voluntarily quarantine itself during the Bubonic Plague. A Native American youth raised in his own language and culture, learned Latin and Greek fluently, and sat down and graduated from Harvard with the sons of the Puritan colonial elite. If I made that guy up, that wouldn’t be so interesting, but the fact that he existed is fabulous. So I guess that’s what attracts me is that you can take these things that actually happened, where you can’t yet know everything that happened. And so there’s room for imagination to say, well, maybe this is how it was.

B&N: So you’re partially a detective, putting together pieces and looking not necessarily for all of the things that will make a character come alive, because half the fun is making it up.

GB: Well, you know, it’s great if you’ve got enough, but you can’t have too much as well. William Styron said the historical novelist works best when fed on short rations. And I did try to write a book once about a particular woman in Tasmania in the 1860s. But she had kept a journal every day of her life. So there was no room for me, you know, so I had to give that one away to a narrative historian.

B&N: Was that the first time that it happened? Or is that happened before we find a story and you’re thinking, Oh, this is great. I think I’d like to do it and then you realize.

GB: No, that was the only one I’ve ever had to abandon when when I was well into it.

B&N: Can we talk about who you were as a reader growing up? Do you remember the book that made you think oh, yeah, I want more of this.

GB: Oh, so vividly, I mean, it was a book called the Valley of Adventure by Enid Blyton and it was about I think it was Nazi looters. So it was really my cup of tea. But it was it was the first book that completely transported me. And then I found out Oh, my God, it’s one of the series is seven adventure books by Enid Blyton and the library didn’t have them. So I was bereft. And then I saw an ad in the children’s section of the Sunday papers saying that somebody had the whole series for sale. And we didn’t have a lot of spare cash in our family. But my parents thought books was something like food that you had to have. So they bought them for me. And I remember the day they arrived, I lined them up on carpet of the dining room floor. And my heart started to beat fast. And I got flushed. And there’s a strange feeling in the back of my throat. And it was a feeling I hadn’t had before. I was I think nine at the time, and it would be another six years before I had that feeling again, by then I had a word for it and that word was lust. But the fact that I experienced lust over a bunch of used books, I think was very predictive of my future direction.

B&N: That is such a great story. And your parents are right, books are like food, they really are, it seems to me having read course a couple of times now that you never lose sight of your character’s humanity, whether we’re talking about Jarret, or Jess, or Theo or Martha, they’re all very sort of complicated in their own ways.

GB: Well, we all are, aren’t we? Yeah.

B&N: When did you know that you had their voices because they are all very different from each other?

GB: Well, Jess was a bit of a cheat because she’s essentially me I was that nerdy girl bringing home specimens from the dump, much to my mother’s just because I was fascinated by science and animals and all those things. So Jess was just was a give me. Jarret revealed himself, just through the writing, I think, perhaps there’s a little bit of my younger son, reflected in him certain certain character traits and certain caution about how much of himself he reveals to the world. And you know, just this incredibly deep bond with animals. And Theo is is a kind of an amalgam of a bunch of friends of mine.

B&N: When did you know that you had the novel that we’re now reading as Horse? How deep in the process?

GB: No, not deep. I mean, I knew the horse itself could carry the novel. I knew there was a book there it was just you know, the structure revealed itself morgue gradually and and how the pieces were going to interact with each other. And that is something that comes from just putting in the hours and putting in the words and letting the story tell you what you need to know and where you need to go with it.

B&N: When you’re stepping back into a book, whether it’s 2019, or 1954, or 1850, what do you have to shift in your own way of thinking, I mean, you’re stepping out of your own life, you’re stepping back into the work. And you’ve talked in the past about reading a poem before you sit down to write, which I love that idea. And I love that image. But what’s it like for you when because discipline is a huge piece of your creative process, from what I can tell. And it’s not just the research, it really is sitting down with the emotion and there’s a lot of emotion in Horse, there’s a lot that happens. There’s a lot of emotional payoff, and we’re not going to spoil any of it. But what’s that like for you to really sit that closely with other people?

GB: You carry them in your head the whole time. So my routine, because I started writing novels, because I had an infant, and I didn’t want to continue being a foreign correspondent, and leaving him behind to go off on long open ended assignments to dangerous places. So my entire novelistic career was shaped by being a mother at the same time. So my work life was constrained at first by how much babysitting I could afford, and then by the school schedule, I fell into that rhythm of working and then you get up from your desk, and you leave it wherever you’re at, at 315 when the yellow bus comes back, but you’re still working in your head, and often the plot point that wouldn’t resolve while you’re sitting on, you know, your fat rear end, staring at your screen. Suddenly, as you’re making cookie dough or correcting a homework assignment, it’s there. So you’re living with these people constantly. And it’s really good when people that you feel warm towards not always the case, you know, Mr. March was, I mean, I admire him in a way I’ve got a soft spot for impractical idealists, but sometimes he was such a vexing guy, you know. So I don’t miss him as much as perhaps, you know, Anna Firth from Year of Wonders, and you know, certainly, Jarret, I see him around when I’m doing barn chores. So you know, they stay with you. They’re very much part of your imagination, and therefore, in your heart.

B&N: You’ve never actually written a sequel to anything, have you? It just occurred to me now, as you said that everything’s been a standalone hasn’t I mean, they’re all sort of have a piece. I mean, thematically, I see where you’re going. But yeah, they’re all standalone, aren’t they?

GB: Well, they are. And I guess, because I have a very restless curiosity. And I’m always, you know, the ideas come very unexpectedly. And once you fall in love with the idea, you know, you think Oh, my God, this one’s gonna be really easy. Well, they never. It’s just like a relationship. You know, the first burst of infatuation with this one’s perfect. You know, as soon as they move in with you, you get to know the darker sides.

B&N: Have you ever put something aside after starting it and thinking, Oh, this is not the thing I thought it was going to be?

GB: Yeah, I put aside people of the book because I absolutely couldn’t do it at the time I was doing it. And then the idea for March flew in the window gift wrapped. And it was so much more straightforward. It was one year, I knew the start point, I knew the endpoint, one guy, one historical period, whereas people are Booker’s six centuries, five continents, talk about mess, mess, mess. That was what it was. So I just put it in the drawer, and I wrote March. And then, you know, I was quite frightened to take it out of the drawer. And I didn’t know if I was gonna like what I’d done or not, but it was a couple of years later, and luckily, I only had to been like 50 pages of it. The rest of it read quite well to me, but I could then see what the problems had been all along.

B&N: What do you want readers to understand about Horse? Because I think there are going to be some people who say, Well, this race horse, but it is much more than Lexington. He is a big piece of this book. But what do you want readers to know about Horse?

GB: Oh, I think it’s a bit presumptuous for an author to tell readers what they should or should not deal on. Now, I’ll get from a book because everybody approaches a book with their own baggage. And also, I mean, I reread a book. And it’s a totally different book, from the book I read years earlier, because I’m totally different. And I need different things from it. So I wouldn’t presume to have any hooks other than if people deign to read it. I’m incredibly honored by that.

B&N: Okay, well, this bookseller is saying everyone should go out and shoot. Are you one of those writers, though? Who starts on the next thing, when the current thing is making its way into the world? Or do you wait until the idea comes in?

GB: You know, I always have the next idea that I don’t generally leap into another novel straightaway, because the level of concentration and the rabbit hole that you need to go down once you start on a novel isn’t compatible with what happens when a book comes out where you’re actually going out and meeting booksellers. Thank goodness, I get to go on tour after this years of isolation. And it’s very disruptive to the kind of concentration you need. So I generally do a nonfiction project, maybe some reporting go back to my old journalistic roots. And this time, I’ve had a wonderful project is for a series of Australian books called writers on writers where one Australian novelist appreciates the work of another. And so I’ve been writing about one of my absolute favorite novelists in the wide world, which is Tim Winton.

B&N: Oh, Breath is really terrific.

GB: Brilliant, brilliant book, but all of his work is fantastic. And his essays are remarkable. So that’s been a great pleasure doing a deep dive back into the books of his I’d read and then finding the ones that I hadn’t, and he’s very prolific. So there was a lot. And so, that’s been my interim project.

B&N: I cannot wait to read you riffing on surfing novels, because that is part of what he does. I realize he has quite a lot of interests and quite a lot of angles.

GB: He’s very Jane Austen esque in that and he has taken his little piece of ivory, a one inch square or whatever she said, on which you she worked with so finer brush. And his little piece of ivory is the Australian coastal town. And particularly, his subject is Australian maleness. And it’s pathologies and its idiosyncrasies, and its problems. He nails, things about our national character in a way that nobody else has. But he’s also very good at talking about relationships. And, and also he believes in plot, which I appreciate.

B&N: I think you’re not the only reader. I think I’m not the only reader, plot. Plot is a nice thing.

GB: Let’s see about stories where things happen to people.

B&N: Well, that’s when you also find out what your characters are made of. I mean, a lot happens to the characters in Horse and boy, we find out who these people are, and also who the people surrounding them are, and a lot of ups and downs in the story. And it’s really satisfying and the way you sort of parse out the shifts in time, and the passage of time. And those are two separate things in a narrative and they’re really, really, really well done. And your characters are really, they’re terrific.

GB: They’re historical figures that many of them are based on with fascinating people. Cassius Clay, who is not the fighter Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, but the person from whom he drew his name was an emancipation us to lived in Kentucky, and was the son of one of the largest enslavers in Kentucky, but he turned completely against enslavement and had a newspaper and had to fight for his life on account of his views several times. And he happened to be married to the daughter of the person who owned Lexington. So he’s in there just walking on and walking off and then one of the owners of Lexington was such an incredibly louche New Orleans riverboat gambler, you couldn’t make them up you know, and who in the philosophies life won and lost fortunes.

B&N: They’re all there. They’re all terrific, even if sometimes they’re badly behaved, but they are great characters. You know, that seems like a good place to wrap things up. Geraldine Brooks, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over. Horse is out now.

GB: Thank you so much for having me.