Sarah Maslin Nir is a journalist who tells us candidly of her upbringing as an outsider in New York’s socialite schools and summer beach homes, where riding horses gave her a personal identity which transcended social cultures. As a HORSE CRAZY teen she learnt to do stable work and ride, first on farm ponies, then in a school implausibly located in a several floors high building near Central Park. Her journey tracks the many horses from which she learned, including the massive Belgian draught horses stolidly plodding around Central Park, which she rode as a mounted police volunteer.  From these she learned that even the Belgians love to gallop.

The breadth of horse and pony characters, and their owners, is amazing; we go from western trainer Monty Roberts to a supplier of stage Icelandic ponies, from an African-American couple running a riding school, the purpose of which is not to teach kids to ride, but to demonstrate that Harlem kids can lead other lives, to a Virginia woman foxhunter. We meet a woman in love with an Indian breed of horse, the Marwari (Google it and you will see the ears prick inwards), who rescued that breed from a post-colonial slump in popularity and now owns the largest herd outside India.  

The author is also telling her own story – the story of breaking her back, of her family’s memory of escaping the Holocaust, of her relatives who didn’t understand a course of study not filled with law or medicine. What journalism gave her and what she decided to do after spending a year attending parties every night, and a year visiting spa breaks around the world: though the book doesn’t cover this, she spent another year investigating NYC’s nail salon industry and exploitative practices, gaining a Pulitzer nomination.

One of my favourite accounts in HORSE CRAZY is the inside look at horse transport by air, because the author homes in on the horse’s point of view, does the work and stands calming the scared horses as the plane lands. However, I enjoyed every single story, and it’s safe to say I saw the insides of a lot of horsey scenes that I otherwise would not. I’ve already been recommending this fascinating memoir when I was only halfway through, as this is the ultimate dip-into reading for horsey people like me, who want to pick up a book and put it down again, as was said about magazines. Sarah Maslin Nir has bared and shared her soul, and her soul is full of horses. I’ll be reading anything she writes.

Book Summary