About the Book
The powerful second novel in Tim Pears's acclaimed West Country trilogy. Two teenagers, bound by love yet divided by fate, forge separate paths in England before World War I.
1912. Leo Sercombe is on a journey. Aged thirteen and banished from the secluded farm of his childhood, he travels through Devon, grazing on berries and sleeping in the woods. Behind him lies the past, and before him the West Country, spread out like a tapestry. But a wanderer is never alone for long, try as he might--and soon Leo is taken in by gypsies, with their wagons, horses, and vivid attire. Yet he knows he cannot linger, and must forge on toward the western horizon.
Leo's love, Lottie, is at home. Life on the estate continues as usual, yet nothing is as it was. Her father is distracted by the promise of new love and Lottie is increasingly absorbed in the natural world: the profusion of wild flowers in the meadow, the habits of predators, and the mysteries of anatomy. And of course, Leo is absent. How will the two young people ever find each other again?
In The Wanderers, Tim Pears's writing, both transcendent and sharply focused, reaches new heights, revealing the beauty and brutality that coexist in nature. Timeless, searching, charged with raw energy and gentle humor, this is a delicately wrought tale of adolescence; of survival; of longing, loneliness, and love.
About the Author :
Tim Pears is the author of nine 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. He lives in Oxford with his wife and children.
Review :
Pears's prose ballad.
Goodness, Tim Pears writes beautifully . . . the descriptions of rural life, executed with painterly exactness, are a constant delight. The prose really sings.
Pears is an exemplary historical novelist with a Romantic eye for nature, and this heady walk through the forgotten lanes of England thrums with life. His unsentimental handling of rural poverty precludes any chocolate boxery, yet his evocation of the land's sounds, smells and tastes are a match for any of the great scribes of the countryside . . . Pears takes his place alongside Flora Thompson and Ronald Blythe--even Hardy--as one who teaches us the real nature of country life as it used to be. The Wanderers is not only a worthy successor to last year's superb The Horseman, but a very fine novel in its own right
This elegiac second novel in Pears's West Country Trilogy (after The Horseman) movingly depicts life in the English countryside on the eve of the First World War… this majestic, foreboding novel paints an emotional portrait of a land on the cusp of turmoil.
A gorgeously hypnotic paean to rural England . . . It is no mean feat for a writer to eschew the tyranny of cliffhangers, coincidences and plot twists, instead trusting the reader to stay with them for the sheer pleasure of the writing and the interest in the world conjured up. It requires unwavering confidence; a consistency of pace and vision that must be there from the outset, and must not falter; and something withheld, however subtly, that creates an itch to turn the page . . . The Wanderers is peppered with moments of awestruck wonder at the natural world . . . In both this book and its forerunner, the care that has been taken with historical research is obvious; but it is this deeper, subtler layer of reconstruction that sets these moving novels apart.
In this powerful, episodic sequel to The Horseman (2017), Leo Sercombe starts his journey west in June 1912, at the point the first story ended… Thought provoking, homespun, and poignantly drawn from the earth (like Rae Meadows' I Will Send Rain, 2016), this second in a trilogy is an unforgettable treasure and will have readers eagerly anticipating the finale.
Tim Pears's complicated characters and lilting place-based language give [The Wanderers] an addictive freshness. He is also one of the rare writers who can capture the unassuming grace of a good draft horse and an all-encompassing rhythm of rural life.
A classic . . . Leo and Lottie step out into the world, and twentieth century rushes up to greet them . . . knotty and nuanced.
In Pears's sentences, long and rolling as the hills they describe, and in his characters' love for and familiarity with their settings, the English countryside and its fauna come to vivid life.
His lyrical but unsentimental portrait of a long-lost rural world, and the characters who are shaped by it, is affecting
Hypnotic . . . Rural living is conjured up exquisitely, the reader sinking into the rhythms of the land. Pears describes a way of life that's infused with an unspoken nostalgia, as we know how much will change after the Great War, and he cleverly shows things drawing to a close without having to mention the conflict that looms large on the horizon.
The writing is both transcendental and sharply focused, reaches new heights, revealing the beauty and brutality that coexist in nature. Timeless, searching, charged with raw energy and gentle humor, The Wanderers is a delicately wrought tale of adolescence; of survival; of longing, loneliness and love.
A novel loud with brilliantly captured voices and vividly drawn characters . . . A lyrical journey worth undertaking.
Pears's painterly style . . . should keep the reader engrossed. He creates clear-eyed portraits of a lost way of life, and of a people whose traditions were disregarded throughout most of the 20th century . . . Country life used to be populated by these eccentric gypsies, pagans and mystics. The Wanderers invites them into our imaginations once again . . . Pears's book is a . . . triumph: a novel for those who--in the words of that old folk song--ain't got no home in this world any more.
Pears's sumptuous but scrupulous descriptions of the countryside are as evocative as Robert Macfarlane's nature writing and as delicious to savour. The book ends before Leo's trajectory back to Lottie, his love from the first novel, has become clear--the final part of this moving, absorbing odyssey cannot arrive quickly enough.
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
Pears steadily and satisfyingly branches out, unfurling his canvas and introducing characters we want to see more of . . . [A] beautiful and engaging novel. Bring on the second act.
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.
The pleasure of it lies in taking in the language and the setting … and in reading it like a long poem, with each chapter a stanza ... I am ready for volume two.
So gripping that devouring volume two the second it appears is a foregone conclusion … As a testament to a forgotten generation of countrymen it is unsurpassed
A mesmerising book . . . An evocation of the pre-First World War countryside, sparely written and imagined with exceptional fidelity.
