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Horses are Leo's vocation. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images
Horses are Leo’s vocation. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images.
Horses are Leo’s vocation. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images.

The Horseman by Tim Pears review – West Country pastoral

This article is more than 7 years old
The opening volume of Pears’ historical trilogy, about a boy who loves horses, is like a long poem, with each chapter a stanza

Tim Pears’ new novel, the first in a trilogy, is a slow read. Not because it lacks suspense, but because 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. I did worry that Pears was steering toward the much-ploughed ground of the first world war, but we don’t get there by the end of volume one. Instead, he successfully camouflages a romance in the dialect of the farmers and horsemen of the time as they make their way through the agricultural year, task by rigorous task; the natural world is sometimes antagonistic, sometimes beautiful, but always alive with detail – insects, birds, weather, crop conditions. Pears is famous for this, immersing the modern urban reader in what he or she is missing out on in the countryside.

The protagonist is Leo Sercombe, often known as “the boy”. Leo is maybe the same age as the protagonist of Pears’ first novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves. No birthdays are acknowledged in the passing of the year, so Leo might not know exactly how old he is, but he is single-minded, close-mouthed and observant. At one point, a friend asks him why he never smiles. He doesn’t say, or he can’t say. Until the very end, he is exceptionally good at keeping out of trouble, and trouble is all around – in the first chapter, Pears reminds the reader of how dangerous life was a hundred years ago: “The smith’s elder son, the one with the livid scar across his cheek that drew your eyes to it, reached in his pliers and drew the iron tyre out of the furnace, white hot.” Leo takes advantage of the fact that he is a younger child, a little more overlooked than his talkative sister, Kizzie, older brother Fred and cousin Herbert, who have more responsibilities. The boy has a vocation, which is horses, and an avocation: exploring the natural world. That he doesn’t do well in school, and isn’t in charge of anything, that everyone else has more work than they can handle are all to his advantage.

The estate where the Sercombes live and work is described through a series of closeups – the stables, the front door, a hidden staircase, an attic nursery. They believably convey the point of view of a boy who has lived in the same place his whole life and hardly ever thought there might be a larger world (though there is a lovely set piece in the spring of the second year, when everyone goes to an animal market to auction two of the horses). The romance part kicks in, not when Leo is befriended by Miss Charlotte, the master’s daughter, who shares his passion for horses, but when Leo comes to understand that he has to leave, on his own. Because a romance must be a quest, not a love affair.

The Horseman is not precisely a “horse book” – Pears excavates the Sercombes’ 1912 training methods with the same sort of detailed and objective tone that he uses when he talks about the other work they must do, but the methods will come as no surprise to enthusiasts. Horse books usually explore how a rider finds a horse (often a rogue), how a rider trains the horse (always a special connection), how the horse and rider go on to perform the impossible (National Velvet). Leo’s talents mean that he is destined to be a professional: to go from horse to horse, doing what he must do, connecting temporarily and with more insight than those around him, then moving on.

As a protagonist, Leo is worth observing, but he is not especially sympathetic. Miss Charlotte is just about the only other character he interacts with. Pears’ habit of setting Leo so firmly in his environment has a downside as well as an upside – it’s easy to lose sight of him, which turns The Horseman into more of a tableau vivant than a narrative. And it is not as though the early 20th century hasn’t been thoroughly mined by English writers already. But Pears specialises in going his own way and doing the unexpected, so I am ready for volume two.

Jane Smiley’s latest novel is Golden Age (Picador).To order The Horseman (Bloomsbury) for £14.44 (RRP £16.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

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