Lord of Misrule

The story follows the inner workings of the racetrack during a series of meets in 1970 (at first it seemed everything was to take place over a weekend, but later many conflicting events led me to believe it was over a period of weeks or months), and specifically as it pertains to a small group of people training and caring for race horses. These people also happen to be a collection of low-level gangsters, horse dopers, and gamblers. Everyone is down on their luck, hence their appearance at a racetrack known for its claiming races in West Virginia, Indian Mound Downs. The idea is to enter their horses into claiming races without anyone realizing the horses can win, and walk away with both the horse and the prize money. Of course, someone always knows and there's a lot of claiming that goes on and sets everyone's' plans awry. The character roles are pretty stereotypical, there are some serious triggers (view spoiler), and there really isn't any character development aside from Maggie's epiphany (and lets be honest, that was [justified] jealousy and fear and not real development). I read the whole book and I still couldn't really tell you what exactly happened or why. The lack of quotation marks and the run-on sentences were a huge distraction and made it incredibly difficult to follow the conversations and the action. I was never sure who was speaking to whom, and whether they were speaking or thinking. It was doubly difficult because each chapter jumped between 1 of 4 points of view, and by the time I figured out whose point of view we were in it was moving on to the next. The author's writing style was simply not for me, and though the subject matter should have been interesting it just dragged on and on because of the way it was written. I'd say there is some truth to the race track behavior and goings on, especially at a claiming track in the 70's, but it feels heavy handed and condescending.