Jump!
Jilly Cooper
Jump!
Etta Bancroft - sweet, kind, beautiful - adores racing and harbours a crush on one of its stars, the handsome high-handed owner-trainer Rupert Campbell-Black. When her bullying husband dies, Etta's selfish children drag her from her lovely Dorset house to live in a hideous modern bungalow in the Cotswold village of Willowwood. One night Etta finds a horribly mutilated filly in the snow in the nearby woods. Miraculously she recovers and, by now called Mrs Wilkinson, captivates everyone in the village. DNA tests reveal her to be a spectacularly well-bred racehorse. Etta forms a village syndicate to put the filly into training, and Mrs Wilkinson becomes a star, ridden by Rupert s delectable god-daughter Amber. Then Mrs Wilkinson is entered for the Grand National. Can she be the first mare in more than fifty years, and Amber the first woman ever, to conquer this mighty race?
3.7 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction, Romance |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
600 |
| RRP |
£18.99 |
| Date of Publication |
September 2010 |
| ISBN |
978-0593061534 |
| Publisher |
Bantam Press |
| |
Etta Bancroft - sweet, kind, beautiful - adores racing and harbours a crush on one of its stars, the handsome high-handed owner-trainer Rupert Campbell-Black. When her bullying husband dies, Etta's selfish children drag her from her lovely Dorset house to live in a hideous modern bungalow in the Cotswold village of Willowwood. One night Etta finds a horribly mutilated filly in the snow in the nearby woods. Miraculously she recovers and, by now called Mrs Wilkinson, captivates everyone in the village. DNA tests reveal her to be a spectacularly well-bred racehorse. Etta forms a village syndicate to put the filly into training, and Mrs Wilkinson becomes a star, ridden by Rupert s delectable god-daughter Amber. Then Mrs Wilkinson is entered for the Grand National. Can she be the first mare in more than fifty years, and Amber the first woman ever, to conquer this mighty race?
Reviews
The Daily Mail
Sara Lawrence
"Rupert Cambell-Black and various other old friends pop in and out, the narrative zips along, pierced with her characteristically brilliant ear for dialogue and empathy for human relationships of all kinds. There’s a hell of a lot more riding of the equine variety than the human kind in this satisfying doorstop of a book, but I predict you still won’t be able to put it down once you get going."
24/09/2010
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The Spectator
Melissa Kite
"Let’s face it, they should advertise Jilly’s novels like the cheezy-peaz sketch on The Fast Show, substituting the words sex and horses: ‘Do you like sex? Do you like horses? Then you’ll love sexy horse books!’ And we do."
02/10/2010
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The Daily Express
Clare Heal
"It might be a similar size, but Jump! isn't supposed to be War And Peace. Instead, it's classic Cooper: either the perfect beach read or else something to curl up on the sofa with to keep out the encroaching autumn chill."
12/09/2010
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The Scotsman
Liz Hoggard
"At times the book is like a posher version of The Archers, with everyone vying for a good subplot. You skim-read whole chapters, especially the fine print about the horses (who else cares except 14-year-old girls?). This is a fantasy Aga country populated by soap stars, porn tycoons and tree surgeons. Jilly has been Reading the Papers, though. There are arch references to Iraq and the BBC's move to Manchester. And there's a gay vicar."
03/10/2010
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The Observer
Olivia Laing
"The sexual explicitness here seems part of a wider desire to stay up to date that has, at best, mixed results. A vastly melodramatic sub-plot involving a Pakistani jockey's terrorist past is daft to the point of incredulity, while the gay vicar's romance with a hunky tree surgeon is so touching as to induce the odd sniffle, despite involving dialogue like "You saved my horse chestnut, now I'm going to save you." This is the sort of blissful silliness one looks for in a Jilly Cooper, and to have to pick it out from digressions on bombs and al-Qaida is annoying to say the least."
12/09/2010
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The Sunday Times
Elizabeth Buchan
"However, she has allowed herself here to step over her own boundary between frisky high spirits and darker elements — particularly in the scene where an unwilling teenager is subjected to a foursome. For all their outrageousness, Cooper’s novels usually stop just short of the realities and consequences of human frailties, and that is their point. To include such an episode kills the froth and fun and turns a delicious piece of escapism into something far less likeable."
26/09/2010
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The Daily Telegraph
Jane Shilling
"The book sets off in fine style, but after Mrs Wilkinson’s first couple of wins, there is a falling-off in the levels of energy and invention. The syndicate badinage becomes formulaic and repetitive, and a plethora of fuzzily delineated minor characters gives the trying sensation of being at a noisy cocktail party where one doesn’t know many people."
09/09/2010
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