last January The Horseman, the first instalment in Tim Pears’s West Country trilogy, introduced us to young Leo Sercombe, a Devon carter’s son with an exceptional affinity for horses. Set in the early 20th century, it is a gorgeously hypnotic paean to rural England, recreating in its myopic focus, languid pace and spare prose a way of being in the world that is all but unrecoverable to our hyperconnected modern minds.
Unfolding slowly, it saves its punch for the final pages when Leo’s friendship with Lottie Prideaux, the local landowner’s daughter, at last brings disaster down upon him. The Wandererscontinues the story of both Leo and Lottie, and with little in the way of conventional plot to drive the narrative, it is largely the question of whether they will find one another again, and how, and when, that pulls the reader along.
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