"Tim Pears's The Horseman, the first novel of a projected trilogy, is. . . a marvelously imagined re-construction of a lost world and vanished way of life. . . I look forward to reading these promised volumes, for this is a wonderful novel. . . Tim Pears combines a down-to-earth rendering of the realities of rural life with a magical sense of another world beyond our everyday experience." - Wall Street Journal
"The most entrancing novel I read this year is The Horseman by Tim Pears. This intelligent and moving evocation of life on a country estate just before the First World War is both down-to-earth and magical. There are faint echoes of Alain Fournier's masterpiece Le Grand Meaulnes, and there's no higher praise." - Sunday Herald, "Books of the Year"
"Magically immediate." - Times Literary Supplement
"The Horseman is a slow but satisfying burn. As a testament to a forgotten generation of countrymen it is unsurpassed and goes very nicely indeed with a dark night, rain on the windowpane and a cosy armchair." - The Times
"Pears steadily and satisfyingly branches out, unfurling his canvas and introducing characters we want to see more of, plus a raft of unresolved issues and emotions. . . [a] beautiful and engaging novel. Bring on the second act." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"As a coming-of-age novel, The Horseman is wise and insightful. As a love story, it is moving and sincere. And as a portrayal of rural Edwardian England, it is powerful, vivid and humane." - Observer
"[A] lovingly detailed almanac of a tale . . . a gloriously devoted poem to England's past." - Kirkus Reviews
"'The Horseman' is so soft a story, so lovingly intimate, so gently celebratory . . . . Pears doesn't wow you with incident. You must pay attention. But when you do, like Leo you will be rewarded with wisdom." - Bookfilter
"The depth of Pears's skill is how he transports us to this particular time and place, allowing us to feel as though we are actually experiencing the novel as we read . . . Bringing Leo to life both through broad strokes and in the tiniest detail, Pears makes his point in the context of an involving, propulsive page-turner which leaves the reader breathless, wanting to read more of this planned trilogy." - Curled Up With a Good Book
"Refreshing . . . even revelatory . . . A work that is dense with detail and richly evocative . . . A very impressive performance." - Jane Smiley, The Washington Post Book World on IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES
"This is it. This is the real thing. This is whatever I mean by the work of a born writer . . . . The imaginative energy reminds me of Dickens, constantly discovering surprising quirks and shifts and dimensions in his own inventions . . . The novel is comic, and wry, and elegiac, and shrewd and thoughtful all at once. Please read it." - A. S. Byatt, Daily Telegraph on IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES
"An engaging, well-written and original novel. Pears could write about the washing up and make it interesting." - Philip Hensher, The Guardian on IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES
"The author is a gifted storyteller, steeped in country lore and the beauty of ordinary events. Like Thomas Hardy whose kindred spirit quietly animates these pages, he is concerned with the dignity of work, the force of destiny and the consequences of human passion." - Peter Finn, The New York Times Book Review on IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES
"A triumph . . . sensitive, heart-warming and hallucinatory." - Financial Times on IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES
"Piercingly beautiful, fiercely lyrical . . . Pears evokes unspoken bonds of love, a sense of community, and organic connectedness to nature in a remarkable debut, a work shot through with moments of great tenderness, beauty, and emotional power." - Publishers Weekly on IN THE PLACE OF FALLEN LEAVES
"Like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road without the apocalypse, this story will seize readers’ hearts and have them rooting for the survival of a father and his children on the run. Pears has produced another strong, sympathetic winner." - Library Journal on LANDED
11/01/2016
The lives of 12-year-old Leo Sercombe and his family in 1911 rural England revolve around agricultural labor on the estate of Lord Prideaux, and each season brings with it a lengthy list of necessary tasks. Though Leo is a keen observer of the natural world around him, his particular passion is for horses, and he longs for a career working with them. As he approaches manhood Leo takes a more active role in his community while negotiating the expectations of his family and forming a potentially dangerous friendship with the master's daughter. VERDICT The ninth novel by British author Pears (In the Place of Fallen Leaves; Landed) is a slow-paced and extremely detailed episodic look at a rural way of life about to disappear thanks to the relentless march of industrialization. Though this book is the first in a trilogy, the plot seems short on both conflict and suspense until its rather abrupt conclusion. However, readers who enjoy pastoral settings and who share the author's penchant for exploring the minutiae of life in the past may be delighted by this novel.—Mara Bandy, Champaign P.L., IL
2016-12-07
In the foreground of a reverent portrait of pre-World War I England, a talented boy's life is set in motion. Opening his ninth novel in 1911 on a Somerset estate, Pears (In the Light of Morning, 2015, etc.) unspools a panorama of rural existence from the perspective of the laboring classes. The Sercombe family works some of the land belonging to Lord Prideaux, aka "the master," following an age-old, effortful seasonal round which allots predictable roles to men, women, and animals. The blacksmith keeps the forge, the sawyer saws the trees, and Albert Sercombe, a carter, runs a stable of horses to plough and harvest. The perspective of 12-year-old son Leo, "another Sercombe with equine blood in his bones," shapes the narrative, as he skips school to spend time in the stables: attending the birth of a foal, getting his backside bitten when climbing into the saddle, and bringing his first colt to halter. Dramatic events are few in this lovingly detailed almanac of a tale, which devotes pages to the harnessing of horses, the reaping of crops, and the practicing of trades and crafts now lost to modern agriculture, along with their vocabulary ("zart," "strouters," "felloe"). Meanwhile, Leo has struck up an acquaintance with Miss Charlotte, the master's willful, horse-loving daughter, and also impressed her father with his instinctive riding ability. An inescapable sense of scene-setting underpins this first volume in a proposed trilogy, alongside a feel of familiarity as the shadow of war stretches toward this eternal landscape with its shooting parties, intuitive working folk, and noble beasts. "Things'll carry on one way or another. Naught for us to worry over," Albert assures his wife, yet the novel closes on a turning-point event and a great act of sundering. This leisurely curtain raiser, a gloriously devoted poem to England's past, springs to life in its final chapters.
