Jacqueline Dinan

A fascinating woman with a fascinating life and centered around horse racing? Sign me the fuck up.

Unfortunately the writing lets this one down. It's a sort of novelised non-fiction, which means that the author is inventing scenes that may or may not have happened in quite the way she's portraying them (and in some cases definitely didn't, because she's played fast and loose with the timeline). What this means in practice is that everything is conveyed via wooden, stilted conversations - it might work better in the hands of a more skilled writer, but honestly this story is interesting enough that it would work as just straight up non-fiction.

Note to self: add some Simon Winchester to your TBR to remind yourself how good popular non-fiction reads.

Also as someone who's lurked in fandom for a long time, Real Person Fic squicks me. And the wedding night scene in this book squicked me in the exact same way as RPF does.

Still! Worth pushing through the cringey writing for the story of the first woman to train a Melbourne Cup winner.… (plus d'informations)