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Jave Lovell is a gypsy-born nobody with a natural talent for horses but no money to race. Rupert Campell-Black is a charming but brutish aristocrat who has never had a problem with money, spending it to get his way, or winning medals. Naturally, the two detest one another.
When Jake has the good fortune to marry a wealthy debutant, he finally has a chance to prove he can make it as a rider. Rupert Campbell-Black will use all means, fair or foul, to get in his way. But in the cutthroat world of show jumping, can either of them resist their hunger for fame, money, and sex long enough to get on their horses?
Okay, so the first time I picked this up I didn’t get past chapter three. It felt like a sexed-up lovefest in celebration up the Tory upper-middle class, and, even setting aside the good old 80s racism regarding the characterisation of Jake Lovell, there just wasn’t anybody in the story I liked very much.
A good friend convinced me to pick it up again. And, oh boy, I hadn’t just got the wrong end of the stick, I was holding the wrong stick entirely.
Riders is a fabulous book. On one level, it’s a romp, a cascade of adventures juggling so many characters and subplots than any other writer would leave the reader dazed and confused. Cooper, however, is nothing short of a master storyteller, and at no point do you lose the threat of the plot or are anything less than entertained.
At the same time, however, this is searing satire, a scathing take-down of the fecklessness and greed of this collection of utterly self-centred characters. This is social critique at it’s finest, a precise attack on the ideals of 1980s Southern England that does so without every rubbing it in your face.
I can’t help but wonder if this book be even more celebrated had Cooper made it harder to read – the story steams along so smoothly that you can fail to notice the quality of the writing, the depth and development of character, and just what a good job she does of taking down what she has built up. If you are a romance lover then you owe it to yourself to enjoy this fantastic ride. If you don’t normally read romance, consider checking this out as an example of how you can be both intellectual and accessible.
The Nobel-prize winning psychologist David Kahneman reminds us that the ability to express complex ideas in simple language is a mark of intelligence, and a good many of us more pretentious writers would do well to remember that. Cooper is nothing short of a genius. Read this book.
