Horse Of A Different Color: A Tale of Breeding Geniuses, Dominant Females, and the Fastest Derby Winner Since Secretariat

Somewhere along the line, an Editor should have warned the author against using a second person narrative style. It just gets annoying after a while. And his dubbing of his wife as "The Dominant Female" is kind of cute at first, but after 300 pages it really grates on the nerves.

Cutesy writing has no place in a book for adults.


Decent, but not great.   February 3, 2004
 6 out of 9 found this review helpful

Jim Squires, Horse of a Different Color (Perseus, 2002)

Horse of a Different Color is an autobiographical account of Jim Squires getting into the horse breeding business and, three years after he started, breeding 2001 Kentucky Derby winner Monarchos. Whether that was a stroke of luck or breeding genius remains to be seen, but following Monarchos through the eyes of his breeder is engaging enough to make a decent book.

Where it falls short is in Squires' writing style. First, note the word "autobiographical" in that first paragraph. Squires insisting on using the third person would have been an amusing trick for a chapter or two, but he persists throughout the novel. It gets old after a few pages. Also, there's something vaguely disquieting about his attitude towards women here; it almost seems too deferential to be real (and thus, a cover for something else). This could certainly be a literary device; the book's subtitle does mention that there are an excess of dominant females within these pages. Still, some of the descriptions in here made me read twice.

When he focuses on the horse, though, everything works just fine. Even the annoyance of the insistent third person narrative fades into the background. Monarchos was one hell of a horse, and Squires' book captures that well enough. Not as well as Hillenbrand captured Seabiscuit or Farley captured Man o' War, but enough for the Derby-and-Breeders' Cup horse fan to relive some good memories.

Recommended, though it won't make the top twenty-five list this year. ***


Horse of a different color--LAME   January 2, 2004
 2 out of 6 found this review helpful

I really enjoyed Seabiscuit, so I figured I'd give Horse of a Different
Color a try. This book focuses on the money and the dumb-luck of the
breeder (and author) of Monarchos, Derby winner from a few years back.
The author uses self-depricating humor and name-dropping en masse to
turn an undoubtedly exciting story into a painful, annoying tale. In a
few paragraphs of unwisdom, author Jim Squires mentioned
Seabiscuit, only compounding my fury at what this book is not.
Instead of interesting characters (although I imagine they were there,
Mr. Squires just didn't let us know them), we got names and
generalities. Instead of heart-pounding tales of horse races, we got
ho-hum descriptions of only two races.

I will admit that there were a few worthwhile pages. I was unaware of
the foreign interest in horse racing nor the internal politics of racing and
breeding, but I would have rather read that in a short magazine article.

Maybe this book is selling to all the hopeful newspaper editors turned
lucky breeder. If that's not you, I'd stay away.