{"id":3232,"date":"2017-06-05T23:41:53","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T18:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fableandi.com\/?p=3232"},"modified":"2020-04-04T15:14:43","modified_gmt":"2020-04-04T09:44:43","slug":"sport-kings-c-e-morgan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebooksatchel.com\/sport-kings-c-e-morgan\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan \u2013 What is Wrong and Right with the Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"
A family saga about race, family legacy, horse breeding, slavery and the lives that got intertwined in between these man-made boundaries. The Sport of Kings<\/em> is shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction this year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The question of why I read this book still baffles me. And the answer being that I kept trying to see the novel\u2019s merit that got itself a place in the Baileys shortlist, 2017 seems to be a weak excuse. The Sport of Kings <\/em>is a family saga of the Forge family who are wealthy whites in Kentucky. Young Henry Forge, rebelling against his dominant father (John Forge), decides to transform his family\u2019s plantation into a racing horse breeding farm. He expects his daughter Henrietta to become his partner and successor in the quest for the perfect racehorse and to uphold the family legacy. Through Henrietta, the Forge family story gets linked with Allmon Shaughnessy\u2019s family history. Allmon is the offspring of a white farmer and a black mother who was abandoned to raise the child on her own in Cincinnati. He ends up in jail and finally arrives at the Forge farm looking for a job. The story is then about the white man and the black man, both trying to make a name for themselves in the world, while trying to breed the perfect race horse. But with such a flawed family history, each character lives a life of misery, paying their debts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The novel touches on strong and relevant themes of patriarchy, racism and history of slavery in the South. My blood boiled as I read John Forge\u2019s statements, one being \u2013 \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say that they\u2019re (women) naturally intellectually inferior, as the Negroes are. They\u2019re not unintelligent. In fact, I\u2019ve always found little girls to be as intelligent as boys, perhaps even more so. But women live a life of the body. It chains them to material things \u2013 children and home \u2013 and prevents them from striving toward loftier pursuits<\/em>.\u201d He teaches Henry that \u201cman is the measure of all things\u201d and that \u201creal knowledge begins with knowing your place in the world<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\nReview<\/h3>\n