It took me a long time to get into this Rumer Godden novel. Her Indian novels are not my favorite. I tend to like them despite the setting rather than because of it. But the real stumbling block for me was the race horse that gives the book its title. Still this time I pushed through all the horsey stuff to get to the characters and the story and of course it was worth it, being a Rumer Godden novel.
One thing that did eventually help to draw me in is that this novel, like In This House of Brede and Five for Sorrow Ten for Joy features a religious community, this time the Sisters of Poverty in Calcutta, India. While this novel has a very different flavor than her other religious novels, it has at its heart of of that same restfulness. It is a novel about grace and about conversion and about trust in God, though there is of course quite a bit about horse racing as well.
As in Godden’s other Indian novels, here she highlights the great disparity between the haves and have-nots, between the rich and the poor. By the time I got to the end I was quite won over and it will join my other Godden novels on the shelf so that I may reread it some day.
