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Book Reviewed by:A taut emotional thriller about love, obsession and the secrets that pull a family apart.
Donald believes he knows all there is to know about seeing. An optician in suburban Boston, he rests assured that he and his wife, Viv, who works at the local stables, will live out quiet lives with their two children. Then Mercury - a gorgeous young racehorse - enters their lives and everything changes.
Viv's friend Hilary has inherited Mercury from her brother after his mysterious death - he was riding Mercury late one afternoon and the horse returned to the stables alone. When Hilary first brings Mercury to board at the stables everyone there is struck by his beauty and prowess, particularly Viv. As she rides him, Viv dreams of competing with Mercury, rebuilding the ambitions of grandeur that she held for herself before moving to the suburbs. But her daydreams soon morph into consuming desire, and her infatuation with the thoroughbred quickly escalates to obsession.
By the time Donald understands the change that has come over Viv, it is too late to stop the impending fate that both their actions have wrought for them and their loved ones. A beautifully crafted, riveting novel about the ways in which relationships can be disrupted and, ultimately, destroyed by obsession, secrets and ever-escalating lies.
The pace flows along sharply, the most affecting portions being Donald’s remembered interactions with his ill father, a man who faced his destruction with grace and good humor. And the novel’s conflict is real. A solid marriage is first torpedoed by the distractions of illness, causing one partner to be inadvertently shut out, and then sinking because of a partner’s different blind obsession. Jealousies are unspoken, and loneliness is unexpressed, as so often happens when a marriage is on autopilot. The Stevensons' have two children, both written with distinctive personalities, but each are only sounding boards rather than active characters involved in the storyline...continued
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(Reviewed by Gary Presley).
In Mercury, when Donald Stevenson sees the horse for the first time he says, "Mercury, true to his name, was unmistakably hot-blooded. The lines of his body, the arch of his neck, the rise and fall of his stride...were...beautiful."
Horses, like dogs, are defined by breeds, and each have their own traits and purposes. Mercury is a Thoroughbred, and that breed, while commonly used in horse racing, also competes in show jumping, dressage, and other equine sports. Additionally, Thoroughbreds are part of the foundation of the American Quarter Horse, a western horse used for working cattle, racing, and pleasure riding.
While no one can say for certain, the breed can be traced, supposedly, to three horses imported to England, each named for...
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