Blinkered

Tale of a Monkey on a Stick

Horse racing is the Sport of Kings, but also the historical workplace of the underclass. Jockeys may inhabit both worlds and can rise, if talented and lucky, from pauper to feted royalty. Duncan Pengilly is at the peak of his powers and anointed at the top of his profession - a prince in silks. Following a fall Duncan now finds his murky past inhabiting the safe and confident place of his present. He fears for his safety - his sanity and his future - after he suffers a series of visions or hallucinations that render sitting atop a thoroughbred at full speed even more fraught with danger than it otherwise (naturally) might be. At the same time his personal relationships also face the same prospects of imminent fracture. Risk and reflex are stock in trade for any successful jockey and Duncan responds to the threat by undertaking a reckless quest to find the source; to find a cure. In doing so he will be forced to confront his past in kaleidoscopic episodes and painful detail. Memories and dreams, imagination and truth. Quite unlike other books of the genre, Blinkered offers a journey in a magic-realism tone through the quagmire of a stable yard. Though racing is mostly observed through binoculars, this view on the subject has its focus set Through the Looking-Glass. "Duncan sat cross-legged on the floor of his study in the midst of the spray and disarray of photographs and files. He wore a vacant expression of loss, inconsolable loss, yet it was that which he had gained that so troubled him. More was less. He pushed a photograph along the floor underneath his palm, weaving figures of eight and disrupting the facts and fiction of his life with his own hand. Master of his destiny. Mothers flew and fathers fell arse over head. Master of ceremonies."