Track Conditions: A Memoir

by Michael Klein

Following his alienated lover to an Ohio race track, Michael Klein began a five-year career as a professional groom in the world of horse racing, which eventually included caring for 1984 Kentucky Derby winner, Swale. Klein formed an intense, loving bond with the colt, but his life was shadowed by the undertow of his alcoholism, a complicated relationship with his lover, and his memories of an abusive childhood. Track Conditions is a heartfelt story of resilience that examines the track conditions that can create and destroy champions, and those that can ruin or save a man.

Genres: Memoir, Horses, Horse Racing

192 pages, Paperback

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.

[Chelsie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I randomly found this book in my neighborhood’s Little Free Library and grabbed it because I am a horse racing fan. I really enjoyed the backdrop of the track and the inside look at what it was like working for Woody Stephens and grooming the Derby winner Swale. On the other hand, the author’s life seemed so very dark and hopeless during this time period, and while I appreciated the hope that lifted the very ending of the memoir, it still left me wishing for more about redemption. I loved the image at the end of Swale in a white sheet with the falling snow, and I hope the author did, indeed, fall up.

[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