Leonardo's Horse - Reviews

"Readers who deify Leonardo da Vinci, view the Renaissance as a time of unparalleled enlightenment, or believe that those tumultuous times offer no glimpses into our own will be challenged by this novel, which is as complex as its protagonist. Leonardo, as viewed by historian-turned-novelist R___, is history's garage, his work a collection of fascinating but uncompletable projects. Berry presents Leonardo's story from his deathbed and R___'s from his position stranded on the freeway inside his 1955 Buick while authorities attack AIDS protestors with chemical weapons. Just as Leonardo had finagled various rival aristocrats to bankroll his projects, R___ and his monkey-wrencher "not wife" have created a fraudulent second life on paper to survive in a world seemingly bent on social and environmental destruction. This may sound overly abstruse, but earthiness, vivid characterizations, and dark, ironic humor (like the "Windfall Taxes Chainsaw Massacre") make this a delightful experience for sophisticated readers. Highly recommended for medium to large public and academic libraries.?Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. Lib., Chico Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc."

- Library Journal

"As in his fine collection of stories, 'Plane Geometry,' Berry shows that cold science can be fueled by heated passion, convincingly belying Leonardo's own oft-quoted statement that 'intellectual passion drives out sensuality.' . . . Unlike its bronze counterpart, 'Leonardo's Horse' accomplishes the magic of motion while simply sitting still."

-New York Times Book Review

"Berry's prose is as active as Leonardo's imagination, piling clause upon clause and multiplying details as he tracks Leonardo's memories . . . . I can't begin to explain how Berry manages to pull this off, but it's an indication of the lengths to which he is willing to go to reclaim Leonardo from television commercials, advertising agencies, and overly reverential art monographs . . . . Berry's ambitious goal is 'plotting a failure, the despair of art, civilization at cross-purposes,’ by which he means the last decade of the 15th century as well as the last decade of the 20th century, and in doing so he makes Leonardo's story our own."

- Washington Post Book World

"A genuinely aesthetic blockbuster.... Unlike the more prominent meganovelists and more like the leaner, more imaginatively honed writers of innovative fiction (from Brautigan and Barthelme to Federman, Reed, and Katz), Berry makes his fiction live as a self-apparent creation whose very liveliness carries its author's persuasiveness. There's no sense of being flattened with an encyclopedia here, or of being browbeaten by some egghead from Mensa. Instead, Leonardo's Horse flows with the motion da Vinci himself is able to capture only at the end. Berry's novel has it from the beginning...."

-Jerome Klinkowitz, The American Book Review

"So yes, we have here esoteric metafiction whose aim isn't necessarily to entertain (and the book has its own debate concerning its intentions vis-a-vis the reader), but that blisters your thoughts anyway. A novel about the nature of genius and beauty and posterity and the insatiable search for perfection will do that to you."

-Rain Taxi