Review: A lovely read
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 10, 2014
So I'm sitting down to write this review of a novel that's lingering in my head, and the one word I'm thinking of is "interiority."  This is a novel of interiors, the interiors of the horse-racing world, the interior of the possibilities of love and forgiveness, the interior life of a troubled pregnant young girl named Virginia who renames herself Lucky but who has not been so lucky. After a suicide attempt, and with the help of her psychiatrist and a groom who's a dwarf, she begins to deal with her past, and in particular the trauma that her foster father has inflicted on her.The writing is lovely, the story interesting, the characters well-drawn, the love story unusual.  I enjoy an insider's look at a world unfamiliar to me, and so I especially appreciated  how Moore provides a matter-of-fact, come-along-with-me journey into the horse world without treating the me the reader as a tourist and getting all explain-y.Living in a Muslim country as I do, I wish that the Muslim element in the story had either been left out or developed more.  It didn't seem to me to be fully integrated, and I had all kinds of questions about Muslims in Canada, the whole immigration and inter-cultural thing – but then again developing this more probably would have blurred the focus of the story.Just as you think the story is coming to a satisfactory if predictable conclusion, Moore pulls the saddle from out underneath you.  The ending unsettles, and raises all the questions again, but this time you're sure that Lucky has the courage and wisdom and love to survive.