- Published: 15 January 2015
- ISBN: 9780224092296
- Imprint: Yellow Jersey
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 272
- RRP: $32.99
Blood Horses
- Published: 15 January 2015
- ISBN: 9780224092296
- Imprint: Yellow Jersey
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 272
- RRP: $32.99
An interestingly wayward memoir, exploring […] the vibrant mixture of equine beauty and human ugliness to be found on the racetrack
Jane Shilling, Evening Standard
A great father-son memoir, and a good book about horses, too
William Leith, 4 stars, Scotsman
You needn’t love horses to find this idiosyncratic memoir a joy
4 stars, Lady
This is desperately sad, life-affirming and just about wonderful. It is the book every father would want his son to write about him
Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
As a memoir, an elegy and a piece of investigative journalism, it dazzles
The Economist
All the elegance and craft [Sullivan] displayed in [Pulphead] are present once again
Tim Lewis, Observer
Bracingly eccentric…Sullivan is a remarkable writer
Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph
Luminous, hard-to-characterise book... By the sheer fizzing excellence of his writing [Sullivan] carries off the difficult task he set himself triumphantly
Simon Redfern, Independent on Sunday
Iridescent
Sunday Times
Amply researched and gracefully told
New Yorker
Sullivan has found the transcendent in the house
Sports Illustrated
It’s a daring approach combining memoir and reportage and, beneath it all, the autobiographical theme of his attempt to understand his father, but it works magnificently
Christena Appleyard, Literary Review
It's a good, funny, moving book... [Sullivan] is unfailingly good company, always curious, often very funny
Theo Tait, Guardian
Sullivan knows how to craft a paragraph and tell a story
Sunday Business Post
Reads as what it is: a great first book
Jon Day, New Statesman
This morning Blood Horses showed up in the post. It’s Sullivan’s first book, a memoir about his late sportswriter father as well as a study of equine racing and breeding and obsessing over. We’re only 30 pages in but we’re convinced Sullivan wins it by a length and then some. He’s the best thing to come out of the south since 2 Chainz
Dazed and Confused
A truly fascinating and brilliantly written memoir recounting Sullivan’s relationship with his writer father but also a detailed examination of horse racing, the love of his father’s life, as well as an entire treatise on the relationship between man and horse
Doug Johnstone, The Big Issue
Blood Horses blends history, reportage and personal essay. The book is an excellent example of the mixed form that the critic Northrop Frye once called an "anatomy". [Sullivan’s] enthusiasm rubs off
John Sunyer, Financial Times
Brilliant, sometimes maddeningly discursive memoir… Sullivan writes beautifully. Blood Horses makes better reading than the smoothly finished works of less witty and accomplished writers
Nick Rennison, Sunday Times
The prose is relaxed, the choice of material telling; it is once more a delight to be in his company
Paul Laity, Prospect