Grand National

by John R. Tunis

Steeplechasing is a sport that knows no national boundaries. Here John Tunis writes about the quest of an American steeplechaser in England, telling a story that cuts across the differences between the two countries and across the generations.
Jack Cobb's son has died in Vietnam. To the father the fulfillment of his boy's wish to win the Grand National means reconciliation with his shattered life. Accordingly, he puts their horse Quicksilver in the hands of an English trainer and spends the winter at his stable campaigning for the race. Despite meager funds, Cobb makes progress toward his goal until disaster strikes. In a preparatory race Quicksilver hits a fence and bows a tendon. The prospects for healing the injury in time for the Grand National seem remote.
And so Mr. Tunis sets the stage for a compassionate novel about courage in the face of adversity. Describing each horse race with all the skills of a foremost sports writer, he brings to his work the extra dimension of human understanding that has always set him in a class by himself.

Genres: Animals

159 pages, Unbound

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

John Roberts Tunis "the 'inventor' of the modern sports story",was an American writer and broadcaster. Known for his juvenile sports novels, Tunis also wrote short stories and non-fiction, including a weekly sports column for the New Yorker magazine. As a commentator Tunis was part of the first trans-Atlantic sports cast and the first broadcast of the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament to the United States.

After graduating from Harvard and serving in the Army during World War I, Tunis began his writing career freelancing for American sports magazines while playing tennis in the Rivera. For the next two decades he wrote short stories and articles about sports and education for magazines including Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire.

Tunis' work often protested the increasing professionalization of sports in America. He believed that amateur participation in sports taught values important for good citizenship like perseverance, fair play and equality, and that the emphasis on professional sports was turning America into a country of spectators. His sports books also tackled current social issues such as antisemitism and racial equality.

Though Tunis never considered himself a children's writer, all but one of his twenty-four books were published for juveniles; their success helped create the juvenile fiction book market in the 1940s. Books like Iron Duke (1938), All American (1942) and Keystone Kids (1943) were well received by readers and critics. Iron Duke received the New York Herald Tribune Spring Book Festival Award for best juvenile novel and was named a The Horn Book Magazine Best Book. The Child Study Association of America gave its Golden Scroll Award to Keystone Kids.

In his tribute to the writer, Bernard Hayes said "Tunis has probably made good readers of millions of young people." His success with the juvenile audience helped change the publishing industry. Along with writers like Howard Pease, his books demonstrated to publishers that there was money to be made in targeting books for teenagers. His influence went beyond simply creating a market for young adult books. "In his attempt to link sports with the communities in which they are played, he broached some highly significant issues in the literature written for and about America's youth", according to John S. Simmons in John R. Tunis and the Sports Novels for Adolescents: A Little Ahead of His Time. Tunis never considered himself a writer of boys' books, insisting his stories could be read and enjoyed by adults. He felt that the word "juvenile" was an "odious... product of a merchandising age". Despite his dislike of the term, Tunis' novels helped create and shape the juvenile fiction book market.

Reviews

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is more like a 2.5 star book rather than three, so I rounded up. And it's really a shame, since horse books for adults are rare. (I assume this is for adults.)

The topic of a parent racing a dead son's horse in the Grand National was done much better by Vian Smith in The Minstrel Boy. Skip this book and read Vian Smith's, instead.

This was written by an American freelance sports writer more used to writing about baseball or track and field rather than horse racing, and it shows. For example, the person who starts a horse race is called a starter. Not hard to figure out. Here, Tunis calls the starter a "referee."

There are some things he did get right, such as the condition of Aintree in the late 1960s, and the strong presence of the Irish at the National and the Cheltenham Gold Cup. He also named a horse Davey, which might have been a nod to the popular steeplechaser Freddie (yes -- that was his entire registered name), who lived in the incredibly long shadow of Arkle.

But, basically, for every point he got right, he got something else wrong. For example, there's a dilemma where Our Protagonist's horse's leg should be "fired" or not. The expression is usually called "pin firing." He got it right that it could be a cruel procedure (look it up), but got it wrong that horses that had been pin fired lost their speed. Usually, speed was never affected, at all. Racehorses are still getting pin fired today, although the procedure fell out of favor in the 1990s.

Tunis also has a way too brief narration style, which makes for an incredibly predictable book. It's as if he's kept himself at a safe distance from getting emotionally involved with the story. For example, Our Protagonist's son dies in Vietnam. There's not much grief shown here.

[Stephanie A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't entirely know what to make of this short novel about a steeplechaser, which reads very much like it belongs in the sort of middle school library my copy was discarded from, if not for the fact that its main character is a middle-aged man and zero characters under age 18 (if not 20) appear on the page. Although I do feel sorry for the man having lost his fortune, his house, all but one horse (profit from the sales of both going almost entirely to paying off business debts) and his son in a matter of months.

Quicksilver is clearly a grand horse in terms of both appearance and personality, and there is certainly a fair bit of focus on both his care and training. I particularly like the introduction of Mrs. Hunting's "new-fangled" approach to physiotherapy for a bowed tendon, much decried by the vet and older horsemen who believe in the time-honored but far more painful (and now largely condemned) pin-firing treatment.

But I also know that Tunis was primarily a writer of sports stories and consequently, this feels more like one of those than a typical horse book.