Track Conditions: A Memoir by Michael Klein

by Michael Klein

Pursuing a lover who fled because of his alcoholism, the author wound up as a racetrack groom in Cincinnati. His lyrical, episodic narrative chronicles five years in horse racing (1979-84), with flashbacks to a ghastly childhood. Michael Klein (now sober) is a poet, and it shows in his unerring use of just the right words to describe, precisely yet colorfully, an out-of-control life that climaxed with being fired just before his Kentucky Derby-winning colt ran the Preakness. A moving memoir and a loving depiction of the byzantine track world.

Genres: Memoir, Horses, Horse Racing

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Sassafras Patterdale · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read in a long time. I heard Michael Klein read a passage from this book at Goddard College and immediately had to buy the book. I wasn't disappointed! I really appreciated the blending of obscure animal experience in this case - race horses (complicated for sure from an animal perspective) with trauma, with queerness, with love, with desire, with fear, with addiction, with the love of a man and a horse.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set against the fast-paced backdrop of the Kentucky horse racing milieu, this memoir is counter-pointed by the slow and deliberate development of Klein's life - a life built through the struggle to slowly uncover his identity while caring for one of the world's premier race horses

Klein is a masterful and poetic writer. His sentences are often lyrical, yet accessible. His mastery of the juxtaposition of subtleness and in-your-face storytelling is superb.

Wanting to avoid spoilers, I will only offer that this book, while a memoir, also allows for development of character and place, an often difficult balancing act.

Having read this book multiple times, and having used it in classes I have taught at universities, it is on my list of "500 Must Reads Before You Die."

Track Conditions: A Memoir

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not interested in the horsey set, but I am interested in the dipsomaniacal sodomitic set and how that set navigates through the horsey set. I fell under Michael Klein's spell of dazzling prose and insights that singed and left their mark like a the wet ring go a glass on a coffee table.

[Caryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Klein's memoir from his racetrack days is penned with brilliant prose. His tale grabbed me on a couple levels, as a lifelong horse person, as the widow of a high functioning alcoholic horseman, and as an avid reader who appreciates a well crafted memoir. The author knows how to engage readers with his adventures, and he does so with total candor, no matter how gritty the tale is. Klein's insights into the inner workings of track life, as well as of his journey with alcohol, afforded me more understanding of both scenarios and how they interact.

[Tatiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a huge memoir person, but my roommate is and she recommended this as one of her favorite memoirs. what's nice about it is that the author is by trade a poet, so it reads much more eloquently than memoirs usually do.

[Scoobs-buddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book