Jilly Cooper's "Jump"

You knew I'd never resist this one. It has horses in it, after all. This is Jilly Cooper's latest, and I think it's a bit of a success. It features Etta Bancroft, a widower who gets involved in the world of steeplechase racing in Britain. When Etta is widowed, her husband leaves everything to their children. The children sell her home and move her closer to them so she can look after the grandchildren. Etta finds an an abused and neglected horse and nurses it back to health, upon which she enters it in steeplechases. I generally like Jilly's books because they are trashy and fun without being mindless. There's always interesting social commentary, references and quotes to more 'serious' literature, and thoroughly interesting descriptions of the places, events, and settings.

What I liked:
-The fact that she's returned to a subject (the English horsey set) she seems more interested in. Her other more recent books like "Wicked" and "Score" (about a downtrodden school and a murder-mystery respectively) seemed out of touch.
-She brought back a lot of the best characters from her past books.
-Lots of funny and sometimes insightful commentary.
-The animals are characters unto themselves. The horse, Mrs Wilkinson, is a particularly endearing character.
-The descriptions of the places, the races, etc are really well done.

What I didn't like:
-The main character, while sweet, is a 70 something grandmother who let her husband, and now her kids, manipulate her horribly. When her wealthy husband dies, the kids sell her house, take all the money and move her to a nearby cottage so she can cook and babysit their kids. And they make her pay them back for the cottage too. The happy ending is that she gets a proposal from a guy who is handsome, kind and rich. I'd have liked it better if she wasn't so helpless and told her family where to go and made a success of herself on her own.
-There are about a million characters in this book. I've read her previous books, so am familiar with some of them, and still had trouble keeping everyone straight.
-I hated that one of the characters is Pakistani, and had at one time been training as a suicide bomber. The negative stereotype bothers me. Some of the discussion surrounding him and the situation also seemed a bit patronizing.
-The single people are portrayed as kind of hopeless. One in particular is apparently shunned and made fun of because she has buck teeth? Of course, once she gets her teeth fixed she gets married LOL. The women in general in this book are subservient to the men, either that or they are portrayed as bitchy workaholics. I'm no women's rights freak, but the characters do seem a bit outdated.
-This book still seems a bit out of touch, not so much as her other recent ones, but it's still there. You can tell the author is getting older as some of the views and lifestyle choices that sneak their way into the book are pretty close minded, unlike her first novels which were pretty reflective of the times.

Bottom line - If you're a fan, don't buy this one thinking it will be another "Riders" or "Polo". Its not. But it's better than her last few.
If you're not a fan, and are looking for something upbeat and fun, maybe skip this one for now and read one of the above mentioned first. They're much better. And they still have horses in them :)