A Fine Place to Daydream: Racehorses, Romance, and the Irish
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$23.00
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Manufacturer: Knopf
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Editorial Reviews:
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Twenty-five years after Laughing in the Hills, his racetrack classic, Bill Barich gives us another—about how he fell in love and found a new life in Dublin, where he was soon caught up in the Irish obsession with horses and luck.
At venues grand and lowly, Ireland’s steeplechase season hits its stride in October and reaches a crescendo at England’s Cheltenham Festival in March, when the Irish take on the Brits for bragging rights before a crowd of 50,000. To prepare himself for the fierce rivalry, Barich traveled his adopted country and met the leading trainers and jockeys; such champion jumpers as Florida Pearl and the quirky Moscow Flyer; the beleaguered bookies who work rain or shine; and a host of passionate, like-minded fans—from Father Sean Breen, the “Racing Priest,” to T. P. Reilly, whose peculiar betting system turns on a horse’s looks.
Witty and philosophical, vividly written, A Fine Place to Daydream is a paean to the real Ireland, a moving account of a surprise romance, and the thrilling record of a hugely exciting season at the track.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Barich strikes again.
Comment: Bill Barich, A Fine Place to Daydream: Racehorses, Romance, and the Irish (Knopf, 2005)
Bill Barich has written a sequel of sorts to Laughing in the Hills, a book Sports Illustrated rightly calls one of the best sports books ever written. In this one, Barich has relocated to Ireland and is in the throes of a new relationship whilst chronicling the Irish jump season. The best part about the book is that, well, it's Bill Barich, who could make the phone book interesting; that the story involves horses and their people is just the icing on the cake. A Fine Place to Daydream spends less time on its author (Laughing in the Hills was a memoir before memoiring was cool) and more time on the Irish jump scene, which makes for compelling reading. I've been a big fan of Barich's for a long, long time, and this one has done nothing to dissuade me. Another fine piece of writing. ****
Customer Rating:
Summary: Living MY Daydream!
Comment: I picked this book up entirely by accident at the public library. Never having heard of Bill Barich, I had no idea what a fine writer he was but the subject matter is one I had long fantasized about: going to Ireland to follow the races.
For an American who's only knowledge of horse-racing is watching the Triple Crown on TV, racing in Europe (especially the UK & Ireland) is an entirely different (& much kinder) sport. The races are run on natural terrain & not necessarily on an oval track. There is no 2 year old racing (a 2 year old Thoroughbred is the equivalent of a 12 year old human). The fact that horses generally don't start racing until they're fully mature at 4, and the natural turf of the courses is reflected in the much longer careers of European horses; 8 & 9 year old champions are common. Races are run both on flat & over fences, and are a much better length than US racing, where 1 1/2 miles is a rarity. In Europe, 3 miles is pretty standard, & 4 miles is not unheard of. Taken all together, European racing is not only better for the horse, but more interesting and varied for the spectator ('punters' in turf lingo).
So Bill Barich, recently transplanted to Dublin finds himself in a world very different than US racing. It's a world where there are betting shops on every corner, and one of the biggest bookmakers runs ads on TV (odds on an old lady crossing a busy street? 7-1!). It's a world in which he can visit the training facilities of top trainers to have a jaw with them about their training methods, & have a chat with the top jockeys over a cup of tea in the family house. It's a world where a local track has a 4 day meeting & the school in town let's its' students out to attend. One of the top commentators on Irish TV is 'the racing priest' a parish priest who gives tips on the races. It's a world I have often daydreamed about joining.
Barich charts his course over a racing season, ending in Cheltenham which is a 4 day meet in the Cotswalds, & is the European version of the Triple Crown. Over the season he has a few particular horses he follows closely, as well as sometimes giving in to impulse & placing losing bets. Written beautifully, A Fine Place to Daydream may start you daydreaming as well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A nice magazine piece
Comment: The book is TEDIOUS. A few mediocre yarns and lots of detail about Irish horseracing last year and before. Lots of old, once-charming Irish cliches repeated and repeated. Too many names, too much trivial detail about weather, horses and people you don't need to know.
I'm a horse owner and interested in racing. I was bored after 50 pages, but battled on for awhile. Maybe the ending is a corker, but I doubt it. Never got that far.
This would make a good 1,500-word magazine piece. Barich is a good writer, but this book is destined for the remainder table - and soon. It is a chore to read it. I think two stars is generous.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Barich's Gold Cup Bid
Comment: When I moved to San Francisco, my father told me to make sure to look up the author Bill Barich, who lived nearby here and whose early books my father admired. One was called LAUGHING IN THE HILLS. I would see Barich at different literary events and went to several readings by him. He was always a laughing, jolly sort of person. But lately I haven't seem him around town, and I had just about forgotten his existence, when a friend popped his new book to me in the mail, knowing of my love of horses and Irish ancestry. As it turns out, Barich fell in love with a woman from Ireland, and moved there to be with her. I didn't even know, but why would I?
His new book picks up with his life in Dublin, a peripatetic life because even though he is besotted with Imelda, he ignores her often to go hunting down horseflesh. The trotters of US race courses are very unlike the jumpers prized in Ireland, and for Barich it's a whole new ballgame. He is older now, on the brink between middle age and being a senior citizen, so some of his moves have a frantic, late Yeats quality to them. As though he knows this will be his last hurrah.
The writing isn't as daisy fresh as in the early books my late father so loved, but as always, he knows how to inject fun into his travel narrative. On St Patrick's Day he gets caught in a saturnalia of drunk racegoers, including a "pair of short chubby guys in leprechaun costumes who were hamming it up for the crowd, their faces painted green and their bloodshot eyes brimful of booze. I was in the midst of a Lorca rhapsody, caught in a swirl of green shirts and ties, green scarves and socks, green dresses and beer, and probably green underwear." Barich is literate beyond the realms of most sports writers, few of whom would have tried even to make the allusion to Lorca's "Romance Sonambulo," the poem that begins, "Green, how I want you green" "Verde que te quiero verde./ Verde viento. Verdes ramas." But Barich makes it almost work.
His story of following the Gold Cup from beginning to end will enthrall even stay at homes. Wonder when we'll next see his smiling face at the San Francisco Public Library, where he would sometimes grace the floor.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A master stylist writes of horses and romance and Ireland.
Comment: I've long touted Bill Barich's LAUGHING IN THE HILLS, named by Amazon as one of the best sports books of the last century, and now after many years here finally is a satisfactory sequel. Barich follows his soulmate back to Ireland, where he also falls in love with the pastoral steeplechase and horses over hurdles on the green:
"I took to it so readily that the flat races began to bore me. Devoted to speed, they were over in a flash, while a good chase unfolded as leisurely as a Hardy novel. The jump races were rich in subplots and dramatic reversals of fate, too, plus they have a pastoral aspect that was transcendent, and entirely beautiful."
Literate, lyrical, and a tonic for the mind. Highly recommended.
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