Tim PearsCritiques

A cross-eyed Devonian party girl relocated to Brixton, a mad scientist experimenting on animals at the Department of Organology in Oxford, a hen-pecked HGV driver from Birmingham, a would-be Cornish wrestler turned cat burglar of no fixed abode, a single father of a disabled son stuck in Crapton Towers in the wastelands of Manchester, an amnesiac who wakes up every morning not knowing who or where he is and a Bradford spinster who works in an animal sanctuary shop.
Bizarre coincidences, tragic events and pure chance throw this motley crew together dramatically changing their lives for better and worse over the course of a revolution of the sun.
A huge cast of supporting characters and extras play their part in keeping the wheels turning and provide welcome light relief to the sometimes sad, dark, pathetic and disturbing pasts and presents of the protagonists.
Humourous and thought-provoking, this is a cleverly constructed and highly detailed novel that has a little bit of everything.
It isn’t the easiest of reads but well worth reading and, apart from a few extremely scientific sections that went right over my head, kept me hooked from start to finish.
What a difference a year makes.

Two young people escape enslavement together and run. One is the daughter of a celtic tribe leader and the other is the slave of Sextus Julius Frontius, Roman governor of Britain.

The two run, not really sure where they are running to, and meet a range of people on their journey: shepherds who feed them; young drunken men who have to be fooled and a couple who hunt, eat and wear beavers. At last they come to the sea only to be met by Frontius.

Olwen is taken away, Quintus remains a slave but having been free no longer wants to be. And so he slips past the guard and heads for the sea where he sets off swimming.

This book reminded me of The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. It's another journey across land by an enslaved person from a writer who is known, and who I love, for his depictions of the landscape and animals. Like Groff, Pears' characters are there to be put back into history those who have been ignored. By bring people from two different cultures together, Pears can explain the bumps in the land and the behaviours of animals but it does become a bit lecture-y at times.

I didn't feel that this book was as good as his West Country trilogy - it feels more like a young adult book - and whilst it combines all of the things that Pears writes so well about, for me, it misses the mark.½

Proud chieftan's daughter Olwen is made part of a peace settlement with the invading Roman forces. However Olwen has other thoughts and escapes from the camp taking slave Quintus with her. Quintus is from the other side of the empire and has an ear for languages, the two try to flee across Wales learning to survive in the countryside and reach the sea in the hope of finding passage abroad. But Olwen has unleashed the might of Roman revenge on herself and her people.
This is a quite short novel which packs a real punch. The story of the two escapees come lovers is simple enough but woven around this tale are two huge themes. The first one is the inheritance of the Welsh and the Celtic myths of their homeland which are presented as the story of Olwen's forebears and incorporate druidic culture. The second is the love of the Welsh countryside, described in detail and woven around the narrative.

I really wanted to like this book, but alas it was not to be. The story is set in the period when Rome has invaded Britannia and is steadily pushing west bringing more tribes to heel by force or diplomacy. It follows a celtic princess who is married off to the Roman governor as part of a peace deal, she however has other ideas. Instead on her wedding night she flees the camp taking with her a slave translator. We then follow their journey across country to the river Severn and across into Wales. And that is pretty much it. There are a few nice descriptions of landscape but otherwise the journey is rather pointless and by the time we reached the end I was very glad to see the back of the two fugitives.

There is a reason why I am always nervous of historical-fiction, the somewhat flagrant disregard for basic facts, this book was no exception. Take for example our meeting with a lone druid and his apprentice who have a Totem pole! So we have imported indigenous North American practices into Gloucestershire where there is not a shred of evidence the native Britons has anything even equivalent. The town our interpreting slave came from didn't get subsumed into the Roman Empire until the following century and were hostile to Rome at the time, and the Roman governor never visited being too busy playing politics in Europe. Basic fact checking would have resolved these and many other issues.

An interesting premise poorly executed.

In this beguiling, gorgeous, yet frustrating novel, we first meet Leo Sercombe in 1912. The young teenager is on the run through the Devon countryside, bearing the wounds of a severe beating, and near faint with hunger.

Gypsies take him in, but he receives little kindness, and not only because he’s an outsider, what they call a gentile. They sense his weakness, his ache for friendship, and, with few exceptions, treat him cruelly because they can, even after he shows his usefulness. Leo has a way with horses, a valuable skill, and he’s curious, quick to learn, eager to please. Theirs is a hard existence, however, with little room for sentiment, and Leo’s reminded at every turn that he owes them his life and had better not try to run away.

Meanwhile, Charlotte (Lottie) Prideaux has just lost her mother, and she too is rootless, without friends, though in a very different, coddled context. She’s a lord’s daughter, and her father lets her do more or less what she pleases, with one crucial exception.

The narrative hints that because Leo and Lottie became too friendly, the boy and most of his family were banished from the estate, which also presumably explains the beating he took. (Since The Wanderers is the second book of a planned trilogy, these events may be more explicit in the first volume, The Horseman.) In protest, for months, Lottie refuses to say anything to her father except, “Yes, Papa,” or, “No, Papa,” and tells him he did wrong to punish the Sercombes.

With great subtlety, Pears shows that Lottie and Leo care deeply about one another, though neither spends much time thinking about it, and both outwardly pretend no connection exists. This understatement makes you want all the more for the two to find one another again. But that’s not how the real world or this novel works, and Lottie and Leo have learning to do.

They’re both empathic, lonely, see beyond surfaces, and love the natural world, about which they have an abiding curiosity. But where Lottie dissects animals to study them and borrows anatomy textbooks from the local veterinarian, Leo helps butcher animals for food and assists a ewe through a breech birth because that’s his job, for which he receives neither thanks nor payment.

Pears never underlines the comparison; he doesn’t have to. You only need to watch Leo make his way, suffering physically and emotionally, whereas there’s always someone looking out for the daughter of the manor. Nevertheless, you see Leo gain knowledge that Lottie may never have. I love this juxtaposition, simple and elegant like the prose, which creates a coming-of-age story unlike any other I’ve read.

Yet The Wanderers, though superbly written with brilliant characterizations, lacks a plot to speak of, a climax, or resolution. Having recently torn apart Charles Frazier’s Varina for that failing and others, it’s only fair to ask what Pears does to overcome this deficit, and to what extent he succeeds.

He does ask implied, powerful questions, and though nothing happens in the usual way of novels, everything also happens, because it all matters. Partly that’s because Pears offers a view of life on the margins that few writers attempt, but it’s not just the content. Here, the episodic chapters open the characters to the reader, and the small moments establish a constant emotional connection.

Even so, I still feel cheated at the end. Does it matter how many questions Pears leaves hanging? Yes and no. If you’re the type of reader who prefers to have everything wrapped up, then this book may not be for you. If that uncertainty doesn’t faze you, the narrative offers a breathtaking ride.

Sixteen-year-old Leo Sercombe, a native of North Devon and a skilled horseman with a deep love of the natural world, sails with the Royal Navy from Scapa Flow in late May 1916 to do battle against the Germans.

That alone would be a peculiar irony, but, even worse, Leo’s encased in a steel-plated gun turret on the heavy cruiser Queen Mary, without fresh air or a window to the exterior. I probably don’t need to tell you that the Queen Mary will fare poorly in the imminent Battle of Jutland. But I should note that Pears suggests how British complacency and pride in an outdated warship brings disaster, and that the sailors pay the price.

Meanwhile, Charlotte (Lottie) Prideaux, an earl’s daughter roughly Leo’s age and a childhood companion (their illicit friendship having caused great trouble in an earlier volume), studies veterinary medicine on the sly. Lottie watches, pained, as her father’s estate transforms under the pressures of war and modernity.

But she’s determined to follow this career denied young women, especially the well-born, and in her zeal, she trusts the wrong party, enduring violence and betrayal. There are no protections in this world.

The Redeemed is the final installment of Pears’s West Country Trilogy and makes a fitting sequel to The Wanderers, a mesmerizing novel of grace and beauty. As with the previous work, in The Redeemed, the prose remains luminous and fixed on the physical world, especially through Leo’s part of the narrative. Many writers try to do this, but Pears has the particular knack of rendering Leo through the natural and metaphysical at once, whether he’s in his gun turret or at anchor at Scapa Flow.

Lottie’s world involves going on rounds as a veterinarian’s assistant, pretending to be male; learning how to help a mare get through a breech birth; getting angry when a farmer mistreats his animals, all rendered in painstaking detail. But she’s also the daughter of the manor, with a stepmother not much older than herself, and the precarious emotional territory that entails. Through her and the constraints she faces, the reader sees England of the past fade forever, a touching elegy to what once was.

I like both narratives very much, though I think Leo’s succeeds more fully, portraying his social skittishness and fierce desire for independence, much like the horses he loves, and his fear to ask for friendship, which he subsumes in a remarkably disciplined dedication for work. You also see how the machine has come to dominate — the gun turret, the tractor that replaces farm horses, the people he once knew who’ve changed their rural ways of life to accommodate the trend — and what gets lost in the exchange.

Throughout, whether from the narrative, the title, or the jacket cover, you sense that Lottie and Leo are meant to find one another again, but you know the path won’t be easy. Pears strings out the tension to the utmost. Along the way, both characters blunder, especially Leo, who trusts very little and has trouble claiming his own.

Compared to The Wanderers, The Redeemed doesn’t hang together as tightly, and though the story unfolds with riveting detail, it’s not always clear why and how the pieces belong or fit together. Though Pears doesn’t waste words, his discursive style may not be for everyone, though I find it enthralling.

I did bump up against one contrivance. The story implies that Leo enlists in the navy at sixteen to avoid the trenches; but if so, why didn’t he wait a couple years to see whether the war would end first? Had he done so, however, I suspect that those two years would have posed a serious problem for the novelist. What would Leo do in all that time, and might he seek out Lottie too soon? Not only that, Jutland was the only major naval battle of the war, and you can see why Pears wants to include it, for he does a magnificent job of rendering it and linking it to Leo’s character.

But that’s a minor point and in no way detracts from The Redeemed. I think I enjoyed the book more for having read its predecessor, but it’s not essential.

Magical realism
(moving objects taped down, as well as Alison's many introspections and dreaming)
alternates with the impact on people, animals, and a farming family of a Spring, Summer, and Autumn with no rain at all.

"...our house was turning into an aviary of household utensils..."

Observations and descriptions like this pervade the book, yet the overall sadness and depression, while beautifully rendered at times,
dominates and makes it challenging to want to read on in the face of even more: "Today might be different. It never was."

There is also puzzling predictability, as with the near drowning caused by the well-known cold cramping and the hay and matches.

As well, the ending felt forced and unreliable. Alison should have been allowed to prove (or not?) the depth of her character,
after all her accusations of Johnathan's weakness, by claiming him as a friend when school reopened.

The Rector was my favorite, though it's hard to comprehend how he could not have seen that a balance between his lingering theology
and the comfort needed by his dwindling parishioners would have been welcome. What fun finally for him and Maria!

So glad The Quarry Bird flew away before someone thought to kill it.

This book got off to a slow start and was actually kind of boring with it's descriptions of the drudgery of farm life in western England in 1911. Until it wasn't. And then it was just so good.

The first in a trilogy it told the story of the coming of age of Leo Sercombe, who is bound and determined to be an expert on the care and training of horses, in the mold of his father. Quiet, thoughtful and determined as he is he falls for the estate owner's daughter and the resultant fiery ending of this first volume is totally out of whack with all the quiet preceding narrative. Therefore, I can't wait for volume two½

This is about a middle class family living in Oxford. I know they are middle class because they called their son Hector - no clearer benchmark of Middle-Classdom in my opinion. Names got in the way of it a bit for me. The father’s name is Ezra Pepin, which conjured up in my mind a Quentin Blake illustration. Any Quentin Blake illustration. They had to stop sounding ridiculous before the story could stop feeling like fiction.

Oddly enough I rather liked the family - there was something endearing about a family group who go swimming together at the weekend without the teenagers objecting to being seen out with parents. There was an unrushed quality to the writing here and elsewhere as the author seems to sit back and simply observe his characters going about their day-to-day business. His observation of small insignificant details is excellent and frequently amusing (“...he tracked a pocket of air around his colon, until it left his body with an agreeable report.”). I also very much liked the depiction of family friends Simon and Minty’s dissatisfaction with their marriage, despite outward appearances. As an aside, the idea of marketing something called ISIS Water in the Middle East.....well, hindsight is everything!

The blurb on the back cover implies that the family is going to implode. And yet one cannot initially imagine such a family imploding. And this implosion takes a very long time. It is a long time in which assumptions made by the reader are gradually and subtly revealed as false. Those who enjoy implosions are unlikely to be disappointed.

‘The Horseman’ by Tim Pears is an account of the slow, meandering life on an estate farm in rural Devon. It is 1911 when, for modern readers, the sinking of the Titanic is not far away and the Great War looms. Two children, born into very different worlds, grow up not far apart; both have a strong love of horses. This novel is billed as a coming-of-age tale but it is also a description of rural farming methods.
Told in a month-by-month format, the seasons unfold in a remote Devon valley where the passing of time is marked by the weather and the tasks undertaken on the farm. There is a long list of characters and at the beginning I confused who was who, but gradually they settled into their roles. Leopold Sercombe is the youngest son of the master carter working on the tenant farm of a large estate. He longs to escape school every day to run home and help his father with the horses; these are working animals, cart horses and cobs, they are almost characters. We are there as Noble gives birth; as Leo’s father shares one of the secrets of his trade, the use of dried tansy to give his horses a glossy coat; and the day Leo is given a chance to break Noble’s unnamed colt. “The boy watched the colt, his young lean muscular beauty in motion, then turned and walked towards the fence. There was but one spectator there, sitting on the top pole, feet resting on the lower, a youth in a Homburg hat, shirt, breeches, and riding boots of a sort worn by the master and his kind.” Lottie, daughter of the master, the owner of the estate, challenges the way Leo is handling the colt. And so begins their shared love of horses.
This is a 4* book for me. Why not 5*? Because the relationship between the two children takes a long time to start happening and then ends explosively which seems out of kilter with the spirit and pace of the story; because the slow, slow pace of the story and the passages of overly detailed description at times felt like sections for a ‘how to use farm machinery book’. But Leo is an entrancing character; his gentle authority with horses, his silences and thoughtful behaviour, make it essential to read ‘The Wanderers’, second in the trilogy.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

I have really enjoyed this trilogy though I cannot agree with the newspaper reviewer who compared Tim Pears to Cormac McCarthy. This last novel works well in terms of the "will they or won't they" in Leo's and Lottie's relationship. I am not sure all the Scapa Flow part fitted properly and in the revealing note by Pears at the end we learn that was based on his grandfather. Is that why it made the cut? Whatever, I did feel all the research showed a bit - kind of, "I have found all this out by reading so it is going in". Having said that the novel retains integrity. It could have all become like 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' but it doesn't.

Such well-controlled prose.

Hmm. Not sure about the ending.

Felt myself falling into this story almost right away, certainly by the start of the second chapter. The writing is lyrical, creating images and imparting information in an intricate weave. It’s a book without a plot, though, more a memoir in tone than a story, an exposition of events over a long, hot summer in Devon, sometimes grave, others times sad and humorous. Not one to speed through. Beautifully nostalgic.

One of two 5 star books Ive read this year. I loved this book. Dont really know why. The writing is superb

A very different book, with the english country dialect. I didnt think i was going to enjoy, but i did till the end. It was very abrupt

Seasons in Somerset circa 1911 with horse-loving, twelve-year-old Leo and his brothers and sister, the children of a carter who works the master's estate. Maybe more than anyone could possibly want to know about pre-WWI farming techniques, but at the same time, the story of "the boy" and his special affinity for horses is engaging. Part One of a trilogy.½

Set in 1911-1912 on the lands of Lord Prideaux in Somerset, Tim Pears’s The Horseman follows the daily rounds of Leopold Sercombe, son of Albert, the estate’s respected carter. For most of the book, the author does not refer to Leo by name; he is simply “the boy”, an almost archetypical figure of pastoral life, keenly observant of the ways of nature and intuitive in his communication with non-human creatures. A reluctant twelve-year-old schoolboy, whose hands feel the teacher’s switch more often than any other student, Leo is neither disobedient, nor simple; his interests just lie elsewhere. Peers taunt him for his oddness, for preferring the company of animals, especially horses, over humans. On the days that he does attend school, he daydreams, his attention absorbed by the swallows’ nest-building activities on the other side of the window glass or the sound of an owl scrabbling in the chimney. Afternoons, he inevitably drifts back to his father’s farm, one of six on the estate.

When we first meet Leo, he stands on the sidelines, observing his father, uncle, brothers and cousin as they go about their work in the fields. Increasingly, though, he joins in on the labour. His father, an exacting man, known to whip Leo’s older cousin, Herbert, for ploughing a less-than straight furrow, is surprisingly patient and forbearing with Leo, never berating the boy for his truancy. He recognizes and cultivates his son’s abilities and encourages his uncanny way with horses. Spongelike Leo absorbs his father’s techniques with the animals. No need for questions; he learns by osmosis. Albert would like to see Leo gain a place on the estate’s stud farm or in the master’s stables. His training of the boy causes resentment in others, however. It intensifies the rancour between Albert and his brother, Enoch, the under-carter on the estate, and it angers his nephew, Herbert, who believes he is the rightful recipient of the training.

Pears’s book is arranged in unnumbered chapters named for the months of the year. There may be as many as five chapters in a row about the busiest month—all called “August” and as few as one chapter each for the months of late fall and winter, when there’s less to be done on the farm. Beginning in January, 1911 and continuing into June, 1912, each chapter presents a seasonal activity on the farm or wider estate. In January, 1911, Lord Prideaux’s partridge and pheasant shoot, in which Leo serves as a cartridge boy, is the focus. Subsequent chapters take the reader through manure spreading, turnip sowing, Mrs. Sercombe’s spring cleaning, the birth of a foal, the giddy spring turning out of the horses to pasture, and so on. Leo sees cart wheels being fashioned and horses being shod. He leads horses to and from the mowing, rakes the mown barley fields, and begins to break and train horses. One day while on an errand, he meets the head groom of the estate’s stables. Herb Shattock takes a shine to Leo and sometimes has him assist with the master’s horses.

Throughout the novel, Pears’s writing is unvarnished but fine. North Devon dialect is used, and biblical allusions are frequent. Considerable attention is paid to the workings of such new farm machines as mowers and binders. It is not uncommon for the author to linger over the intricate workings of cogs and rollers. Implements used by the smith, games keeper, and carter are precisely named.

The Horseman sets the reader down in the now-vanished world of rural England of more than a hundred years ago, where the rhythm and pace of working life were slower and dictated by the changing seasons, and where the harshness and physicality of existence were more directly experienced, too. Pears is especially strong at showing the complexity of the relationships between humans and domesticated animals. Unlike most of us, rural people then had daily contact with, even deep attachments to, the animals they would eventually eat. Leo has difficulty with this. It is “a mystery”, his mother says, that cared-for animals should come to such an end, but the Lord decreed it. Still, she adds, Leo is right to ponder this strange and puzzling thing. In a similar vein, Leo’s father confesses he had to make a case to the gaffer (boss) about not being responsible for selling those horses he had watched being born and had personally worked with.

In its attention to the cycle of the seasons and with its rustic characters (not to mention a distressing scene involving a pig that rivals the one in Jude the Obscure), The Horseman recalls the works of Hardy, but it lacks the intricate plotting of the great Victorian novelist. The narrative becomes most lively in the scenes where the master’s motherless, headstrong daughter, Charlotte, appears. Like Leo, “Lottie” was born in the last year of the last century. Spirited, emotional, and an expert horsewoman herself, she is one of the few humans to actually pique his interest. Though only a young girl with a small gun, she performs admirably in the shoot described at the beginning of the book. A little later, she dresses in boy’s clothes and watches Leo from atop a fence as he trains a colt. Lottie and Leo’s attraction to each other is natural, sympathetic, and uncomplicated by talk.

The first two-thirds of Pears’s book move at a very slow pace—with nothing much of consequence happening, but that all changes very suddenly as the novel draws to a close. In the final chapters, quiet, guileless Leo unwittingly provokes unanticipated, dramatic upheaval in the Sercombe family. No doubt the fall-out from this event—the change it brings to Leo’s and his family’s fortunes—is to be explored in the next installment of a planned trilogy.

Some years ago I was captivated by Pears’s debut, In the Place of Fallen Leaves. I later attempted his In a Land of Plenty, but it didn't engage me. A few months ago, though, my hopes were renewed when I learned that with The Horseman Pears would be returning to the pastoral setting of his first novel. As it turns out, this new book still couldn't quite take me back to the place of his first one. I was occasionally frustrated with the slow pace, the lengthy (and sometimes tedious) descriptions of farm work and equipment. However, once I recognized that the book was going to demand an adjustment in reading pace and more mental effort than I’m used to applying to fiction, I came to appreciate the book. It grew on me, and I find myself looking forward to discovering Leo’s fate in Pears’s next book.

I’d recommend The Horseman to patient readers with an interest in rural life and England’s agricultural past. Rating 3.5 (rounded down to 3).

Many thanks to the publisher, Bloomsbury USA, and NetGalley for providing me with a digital text for review.

Told from the point of view of teenage Alison, this book is set in the end of the hot summer of 1984 (in the UK). I found the book unimpressive, despite realistic people and fairly well-flowing conversation. There were some odd changes of perspective which shouldn't be possible in a first-person novel, and flashbacks which didn't quite work, confusingly interspersed with the present. It was also quite hard to read at times with strongly accented Devonshire speech.

The story of an apparently happy family, who have a lot going on under the surface. I liked some of the people, and loved the early chapters of this book, which were written with observational skill to rival Anne Tyler, describing the family minutely in every day activities, with an amusing style.

Gradually I found it getting more sordid, and the climax was shocking, though not entirely unexpected. I found the ending somewhat disturbing... overall it was an interesting read; perhaps three-and-a-half stars rather than three, but I doubt if I'll read it again.

When Owen Ithell’s young daughter is killed in a car crash, his marriage falls apart and he is denied access to his remaining children. Increasingly frustrated by the social welfare bureaucracy, Owen decides to collect his children from their school and take them on a journey to his childhood home in Wales. What I enjoyed most about this intriguing book are the beautiful descriptions of the natural world. This novel was shortlisted for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Award.

I definitely preferred the first half, but it was nicely written and the ending beautifully heartbreaking, if you know what I mean.

Just beautiful, I can't think of any way to sum up how rich this book is. Pears is the prince of legant simile.

If Thomas Hardy read up on magic realism, took antidepressants, and was interested in writing sympathetic, believable characters, he might write In the Place of Fallen Leaves. In other words, it's a Thomas Hardy novel for people who don't like Thomas Hardy novels (such as me.)

I especially enjoyed reading it because it's set a bit to the south-west of where I'm currently living in Devon, and was full of fascinating local color.

Beautifully and unusually written; I highly recommend it!

Crikey! 4.06 was the average rating for this book before I rated it. I'm shocked!! It's not bad, but actually I'd say it's not that good. At the Nancy Pearl cutoff I was ready to discard it and pull something decent off my TBR pile, but the high LibraryThing rating and the impressive string of reviewer quotes convinced me to keep on reading. About 10 pages later I was sure I'd taken the right step in continuing to read. "It's just a bit slow getting started", I thought. However, as I approached the end of the book, several dreary reading days later, I realized that Nancy Pearl was correct after all. As I look back on this book I am more inclined to categorize the writing as pretentious and flowery, rather than "the work of a born writer" that A.S.Byatt would have me believe, or "...beautifully written, hypnotic as Proust..." that Jane Gardam says (who the hell is Jane Gardam? and do I want to be hypnotized anyway?).

I didn't warm to any of the characters, and indeed I didn't really get to know them that well. There is a mildly interesting story in this book and I suppose it says something about rural England (but I can't verify this, as I've never been there myself), but to me the novel doesn't really contain any compelling reason to take it off the shelf.

Anyone want my copy?½