The Horseman
The West Country Trilogy
Published on 12. January 2017
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-4088-7687-9 (ISBN)
Description
From the prize-winning author of In the Place of Fallen Leaves comes a beautiful, hypnotic pastoral novel reminiscent of Thomas Hardy, about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911
1911. In a forgotten valley, on the Devon-Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year-old Leopold Sercombe skips school to help his father, a carter. Skinny and pale, with eyes as dark as sloes, Leo dreams of a job on the Master's stud farm.
As ploughs furrow the hard January fields, the Master's daughter, young Miss Charlotte, shocks the estate's tenants by wielding a gun at the annual shoot. Spring comes, Leo watches swallows build their nests, hedgerows thrum with life and days lengthen into summer. Leo is breaking a colt for his father when a boy dressed in a Homburg, breeches and riding boots appears. Peering under the stranger's hat, he discovers Charlotte.And so a friendship begins, bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries - boundaries that become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence...
Hallucinatory, beautiful and suffused with the magic of nature, this tale of an unlikely friendship and the loss of innocence builds with a hypnotic power. Evoking the realities of agricultural life with precise, poetic brushstrokes, Tim Pears has created a masterful, Hardyesque pastoral novel. The first in a dazzling new trilogy, The Horseman is his greatest achievement.
1911. In a forgotten valley, on the Devon-Somerset border, the seasons unfold, marked only by the rituals of the farming calendar. Twelve-year-old Leopold Sercombe skips school to help his father, a carter. Skinny and pale, with eyes as dark as sloes, Leo dreams of a job on the Master's stud farm.
As ploughs furrow the hard January fields, the Master's daughter, young Miss Charlotte, shocks the estate's tenants by wielding a gun at the annual shoot. Spring comes, Leo watches swallows build their nests, hedgerows thrum with life and days lengthen into summer. Leo is breaking a colt for his father when a boy dressed in a Homburg, breeches and riding boots appears. Peering under the stranger's hat, he discovers Charlotte.And so a friendship begins, bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries - boundaries that become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence...
Hallucinatory, beautiful and suffused with the magic of nature, this tale of an unlikely friendship and the loss of innocence builds with a hypnotic power. Evoking the realities of agricultural life with precise, poetic brushstrokes, Tim Pears has created a masterful, Hardyesque pastoral novel. The first in a dazzling new trilogy, The Horseman is his greatest achievement.
Reviews / Votes
A novel that is as moving and profound as it is evocative of the landscape and period ... Pears's fiction has been likened to Thomas Hardy's, and the comparison is apposite. 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 * Pears has often been praised for his strong, clear prose and his ability to tell fascinating stories without fuss or fanfare. The Horseman is his best work in many years. As a testament to a forgotten generation of countrymen it is unsurpassed * The Times * The pleasure of it lies in taking in the language and the setting - the West country, in 1911 and 1912 - and in reading it like a long poem, with each chapter a stanza ... The natural world is sometimes antagonistic, sometimes beautiful, but always alive with detail ... I am ready for volume two -- Jane Smiley * Guardian * With hypnotic lyricism, Pears describes this bucolic Devon world and the people who inhabit it ... [A] paean to the pastoral * Mail on Sunday * A mesmerising book ... An evocation of the pre-First World War countryside, sparely written and imagined with exceptional fidelity -- Clive Aslet * Country Life * This book needs to be read with quiet attention to reap its rich rewards -- John Harding * Daily Mail * An assured, slow-burn, lyrical book, a rewarding read in our troubled times. Once again Pears celebrates growing up, the trials of family life and the beauty and wildness of untamed nature, offering fascinating insights into the consolations as well as the cruelties of rural life -- Jackie McGlone * Herald * A beautiful portrait of rural life at the turn of the century ... Tim Pears combines meticulously researched historical material ... all depicted in rich, evocative detail - with lush, languorous, melodic prose ... A distinctly compelling pastoral bildungsroman that leaves the reader eager for the next installment * BBC Countryfile * Evocative of Hardy ... The Horseman is itself an exhilarating vision, a bittersweet elegy for the innocent certainties of an agrarian world before the industrialised horrors of the 20th century come crashing down * Irish Times * A magnificent novel. In spare yet elegant precise prose Tim Pears offers entrance into a place and characters otherwise lost to time ... Leo Sercombe is one of the most engaging creations to come along in fiction in a long time and I eagerly look forward to following his life in future tellings. Tim Pears is a novelist of the first rank and I can't recommend The Horseman more highly -- Jeffrey Lent Neatly crafted, and compelling * Spectator *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
Weight
451 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-7687-9 (9781408876879)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
01/2017
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€10.49
Available for download
Person
Tim Pears is the author of eight novels: In the Light of Morning, In the Place of Fallen Leaves (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), Wake Up, Blenheim Orchard, In a Land of Plenty (made into a ten-part BBC series), A Revolution of the Sun, Landed (shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 and the 2011 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, winner of the MJA Open Book Awards 2011), and Disputed Land. He has been Writer in Residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, and has taught creative writing at Ruskin College and elsewhere. He lives in Oxford with his wife and children.
www.timpears.com
www.timpears.com