Magic (Susan Elkin reviews)

I recently spent a few days with a dear old friend who lives in Cornwall. Horse was lying on her coffee table because she was enthusiastically preparing it for presentation to her book club. I picked it up, read three pages and was instantly drawn in. On the way home I bought a download while waiting on Truro station and had devoured almost a quarter of it before I reached Paddington. This was my first encounter with Geraldine Brooks. It won’t be the last.

An astonishingly accomplished blend of fact and fiction, this historical novel uses time shifts to explore the world of nineteenth century horse racing in the southern American states where, of course, it was usually slaves who did the training and stable management. It also takes us to present day Washington DC where Theo, a cultured, beautifully mannered, black art historian chances on a scruffy old paining of a race horse and starts a relationship with a white woman, Jess, whose field is animal bones and their display.  We also visit the early 1950s where a female art dealer finds – guess what? – an intriguing painting of a horse. But this is much more than clever, linked-up story ranging over 170 years. It is almost epic in scope as it highlights racism then and now. And I learned a huge amount about horses, how they’re built and how they function.

Lexington was (in real life) one of the most famous race horses in the nineteenth century and  has acquired almost legendary status. Brooks’s character Jarett is present at Lexington’s birth because his father is trainer for his white owner. Later, Jarret is sold “down the river” with Lexington. The bond between boy/man and horse is beautifully done. They are sometimes cruelly separated but reunited and Lexngton excels until disaster strikes but there is still a future for him as a stud. And of course we meet the artist who paints him. Most of the characters here were real people richly brought to life by Brooks whose writing is as accessible as it is profound and heart-breaking. She’s very good at capturing the way Jarret would have addressed the slave owning men and their families – always wary but gradually finding confidence.

The civil war is graphically evoked in this novel. It’s hard to imagine the animosity of factions whose lives and livelihoods depended on the outcome of the war and of course there were gangs of thugs who simply plundered, stole and took advantage of everyone else. And horses, including Lexington, were often at the centre of these atrocities.

And I loved the way that this connects with the 2020s when because Lexington’s skeleton turns up in some dusty back room at the Smithsonian.

Theo, is a delightfully drawn character – as is his dog, Clancy – and I fell in love with him almost as much as Jess does. I really don’t want to include spoilers here. Suffice it to say it doesn’t go as the two of them would like and the reasons are hideously, plausibly topical. Jarret, a century and a half earlier is, eventually rather luckier despite his humble orgins.

It’s a meatily moving read and one of the best modern novels I’ve read in a while.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Bess of Hardwick by Mary S Lovell

We all read at different levels. I used to tell my students that it was fine to be enjoying Henry Fielding one week, Stephen King the next and Colleen Hoover the week after if you feel like it. Throw some graphic novels, non-fiction, poetry and anything else you fancy into the mix.  Real Readers have eclectic tastes. Besides you will never develop any critical judgement if you always read in the same genre. And it doesn’t matter two hoots whether it’s a hardback with an arty cover, a dog-eared paperback or a digital download. It’s the content that counts. What fun I had subverting stuffy, blinkered teaching colleagues who were portentously instructing the students to read Shakespeare, Dickens and Orwell (preferably in antique bindings) to the exclusion of all else.

Sometimes, moreover, we all need to read – for comfort, maybe – about people and situations which are so close to our own world and experience that we could almost reach out and touch them. Ask my 20-something granddaughters, both of whom are addicted to Freida McFadden.

As for me, I have recently been unwell with a really horrible, three week-long cold (or was it some other viral thing?) in the middle of which I had double cataract surgery. I couldn’t – almost the worst part of the whole experience – read at all for a few hours but as soon as I could I reached for Julia Jarman’s latest “Widows” novel: The Widows’ Book Club. And apart from anything else it was a delicious contrast to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis which I’d reread a few days earlier. Reading as widely as possible is healthy. I rest my case.

This is the fourth book in the series featuring three women from Bedfordshire who originally met at a rather awful bereavement group and, soon joined by a fourth, decide to meet regularly and form their own support system. They like wine, food, dogs, clothes and, of course, nice men of a certain age. Now, with three of them quite happily “partnered”, they have to start a book club as a ploy to deal with Janet’s old friends, Lewis and Christobel who’ve come to live nearby in a Very Posh house. Christobel is bossy, difficult and puts backs up – and the relationship between her and her rather lovely husband of 45 years seems a bit odd.

I spotted where the plot was going at about the halfway point. It didn’t matter, though. Jarman writes so wittily that reading this book is like sipping a delicious cup of high quality, creamy hot chocolate. I love the way, for example, she includes the subtext – what characters are thinking rather than saying – in italics.

Zelda’s partner Richard, whom she met on a cruise in the third book, is a blind internationally renowned American cellist whose  guide dog Billie sits alongside him at performances. When he plays the Elgar concerto at a Prom, all four women go to the concert. Yes, this really is a world I know although, much as I’d like to, I’ve yet to see a guide dog on a concert platform.

It’s good fun – especially if, as I was, you’re feeling a bit under the weather. Probably best to start at the beginning of the series, if you’re new to these books, though.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves:   Horse by Geraldine Brooks

Eric Tucker, who died in 2018, left a former Warrington council house full of messy hoardings and over 500 paintings that he’d produced over the previous 60 years. Of course his family knew that he painted but they had no idea of the extent – or the astonishing, consistent quality. Eric, who was eccentric, unpredictable, tramp-like in appearance but much loved by his often exasperated family, was secretive about his art. But then, in his final years, he let it be known that actually he’d quite like an exhibition.

His brother and sister and nieces and nephews tried hard but time outran them and, in the end, the first exhibition of the man the Daily Mail dubbed “the secret Lowry” ran as a memorial after Eric Tucker’s death.

Eric Tucker didn’t go to art school. He left school at 14, worked in manual labouring jobs and for a while boxed professionally. There is though, evidently, an artistic gene in this family since his younger brother Tony did go to art school and worked in graphic design. So did Tony’s son Joe, a script-writer, who wrote this book about his Uncle Eric. Published in 2025, it was serialised on BBC Radio 4 and became a Sunday Times best seller. I discovered it when a friend came to coffee and accidentally left it in my house.

Eric Tucker was a complex man who rejected, with a vengeance, anything he regarded as pretentious. Of course he loathed modernism in art and got his education from making weekly trips to Manchester (two hours each way) to visit art galleries and enjoy a pint. Joe Tucker describes these as quasi pilgrimages.  Ertic’s art depicts working class people in urban environments in streets, pubs, shops and out and about. He also did self portraits and street performers such as circus clowns. There are number of illustrations in Joe Tucker’s book or you can call up dozens of examples online – because, posthumously, Eric Tucker  is now quite well known.

The first exhibition was in the house that Tucker shared with his mother until her death when he was 76. They stripped out some rooms, presented some as Tucker left them and had everything painted white. Against this they hung paintings and put together a basic catalogue. Joe Tucker  led the publicity campaign, of which the details are fascinating, The art world is enclosed and impenetrable. Approaches that his and his father tried seemed to hit brick walls and as the date approached Joe Tucker was almost certain that nobody would attend and that the whole thing would be a damp squib. Then, at the eleventh hour, there was a tiny breakthrough in the form of an article which was picked up by the BBC Today programme. Suddenly the floodgates of publicity burst open. And so many people attended the exhibition that there was a long winding queue and crowd management skills were required. All this makes a wonderful, very British, uplifting story of ordinary people competing with Big People and triumphing. It would make a touching film in the tradition of Brassed Off, Calendar Girls, Kinky Boots or Made in Dagenham. How about Ian McKellen as Eric and Rory Kinnear as Joe?

In some ways, Eric was a troubled man. His father died in the  Second World War when he was only 10 and his brother Tony was born posthumously. He adored his mother and never really established a relationship with his stepfather although Joe Tucker stresses that the latter was a very decent, loveable man and beloved grandfather. Yet, somehow they all lived in that small house, eventually establishing a uneasy truce whereby Eric had the front room for painting and his “parents” occupied the back.

Joe Tucker explores Eric’s background extensively including finding a woman who may once have been a love interest but he also respects his uncle’s privacy and refuses to intrude too much. Eric wasn’t quite a recluse. He had strong relationships with all his family but there were  often arguments and disagreements. Joe remembers spending a lot of time at his grandparents’s house in childhood. Uncle Eric, of whom he was very fond, would take him to school and pick him up as well as offering plenty of whacky advice. Eric always, for instance, detested any form of authoritarianism and the account of his compulsory stint in National Service is witty and faintly poignant.  For all that he was a very private man and Joe uncovers a lot of things which he didn’t know during Eric’s lifetime.

There have been several exhibitions since Eric’s death and his paintings fetch good prices – quite a legacy. In a way it’s pity he didn’t live to see it although he would probably have loathed the commercial aspect of it all and withdrawn.

Joe Tucker’s book is an interesting, affectionate memorial too and has, no doubt, done much to help put Eric Tucker on the map. It’s very readable (I devoured it in two days) and one of the most entertaining non-fiction books I’ve read in a while.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Widows’ Book Club by Julia Jarman