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Riding Lessons: A Novel
by Sara Gruen
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Edition: Paperback
Publication Date: April 01, 2007
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
ISBN: 0061241083
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 12699
Average Customer Rating: 
List price: $13.95
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Showing page 1 of 20
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Reviews
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 A huge disappointment, January 4, 2009
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I loved Water for Elephants-- a compelling story with a F. Scott Fitzgerald-like feel to it, so we picked Riding Lessons for our book club. It was lite chick-lit at its most trite and contrived. The main character is completely self-absorbed and unsympathetic; she creates all the misery in her life, and somehow we're expected to care about it. The chapter in which she tries to cook a meal but fails miserably was unreadable. Come on, how many times has that device been used? The ending was predictable about halfway through the book. I think that the only satisfying ending would have been if the barn burned down, consuming all the characters in flames. That she chose to write a sequel is mind-boggling.
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Water for Elephants lover, January 4, 2009
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I loved Water for Elephants, so was interested in reading Sara Gruen's other books. Riding Lessons is a very wonderful story, with delightful characters that you fall in love with. I cannot rate it 5-star because the connection didn't hit all the way home for me. I'm not a horse person, so I didn't feel the connect other horse people must feel while reading this book. Some horse terms were thrown around that I wasn't familiar with, making me feel like I was peeking into an unfamiliar life. But other than that one fault, I loved the story and characters, and was glad I'd also checked out the sequel Flying Changes from the library so I could continue onto the 2nd book immediately!
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Painful, December 16, 2008
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Sara Gruen has invented a character so inadequate, insensitive and incompetent, that it defies credulity to accept that this 'heroine' has enough insight to narrate a first person account of her ridiculously tenuous hold on reality. She does not cook or clean or parent her daughter or help her mother care for her desperately ill father. She takes on the management of the stable business, but does not even get to know her employees. She expects sympathy from her audience, as she whines or screams through page after page. I actually felt sympathy for the fictional people with whom this fictional woman interacted, until I decided that life was too short to spend another moment on this tale. The death of her father was where I reached the end of my tolerance for this book. I had enjoyed Water for Elephants very much, and was sorely disappointed in this attempt to create a story around horses, and people who like them.
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 Whine and Cheese, November 29, 2008
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Skeleton of the plot: The opening scene is an eloquent and exciting description of AnneMarie Zimmer, a nineteen year old girl, and her magnificent striped horse Harry, about to win a prestigious equestrian event. Disaster results, and the story resumes almost two decades later. AnneMarie returns to her family's equestrian center, where her father is dying.
There is no question that Sarah Gruen can write, and write entrancingly well. In the case of Riding Lessons, the question is how much stable muck you are willing to wade hip deep through to get to the unlikely conclusion of the story. Not since the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew novels of my childhood have I seen an author telegraph plot twists so enthusiastically, and so much in advance. And not since.....ever, have I felt so much antipathy for the protagonist of a story. AnneMarie's grinding narcissism, belief-defying and adolescent impetuosity, and high decibel wailing, moaning, and whining simply did me in. There is a romantic angle to the plot, pitting a cartoonish pony-tailed French demi-god riding instructor against Dan, the local steadfast all around do-gooder veterinarian (he runs a rescue ranch for horses). By the end of the book, you pity the winner, and yearn to tell him to get LOTS of therapy before letting AnneMarie slip a marital halter over his head.
Brief summary: the best part of the book is the glimpse into the inside world of equestrian competition and horse ownership in general, portrayed with lucid and inventive prose. The worst part? All the rest. Skip this book, and read Water for Elephants instead. If you've read Water for Elephants, quit while you're ahead.
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The power of a healing horse, November 19, 2008
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For those of us familiar with horses we know they can be both a dangerous and healing animal, all rolled up in one package. This book shows us how the main character's life is wrapped in many horses and how she is both harmed (emotionally and physically) then heals from the horses around her later in her life. In a sense we have probably all been there with a horse.
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Reviews
