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From the prize-winning author of In the Place of Fallen Leaves comes a beautiful pastoral novel about an unexpected friendship between two children, set in Devon in 1911 - the first book in the West Country trilogy

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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, Leo dreams of a job on the estate´s stud farm. He 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 Miss Charlotte, the Master´s daughter. And so begins a friendship between the children, bound by a deep love of horses, but divided by rigid social boundaries - boundaries that become increasingly difficult to navigate as they approach adolescence.

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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

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Pears, Tim
Tim Pears is the winner of a Lannan Prize and the author of ten novels, including In the Place of Fallen Leaves (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), In a Land of Plenty (made into a ten-part BBC series), Landed (shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2011, winner of the MJA Open Book Awards 2011) and, most recently, The Horseman (2017) and The Wanderers (2018), first two books in The West Country Trilogy. In America he has received a Lannan Award. He has been Writer in Residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow and Reading Round Lector, and has taught creative writing for Arvon, the University of Oxford, First Story and Ruskin College, among others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He and his wife live in Oxford. They have two children.

timpears.com

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