Changes

''The Horseman'' feels like a novel written much earlier than 2016. This is in large part because it is set in 1911 in rural Somerset but also because Pears writes in a style which is reminiscent of authors in the twentieth century, if not the nineteenth. Readers who are hoping for action, pace and suspense will be sorely disappointed in ''The Horseman'', in which not a lot happens at all; the story could easily be condensed into a couple of pages. However, if you have a rainy weekend in a cosy cottage somewhere, Pears provides the perfect companion, giving readers an antidote to frenetic, twenty -first century urban life.

Pears works chronologically and names each short chapter after its month, making the reader hyper -conscious of the way seasons dictate the contents of the novel. ''The Horseman'' is an intensely physical novel; there is hunger, sweat, cold and brutal exhaustion at the end of a day of backbreaking labour. Even when Leo is at school, he is distracted from his work by swallows nesting in the eaves of the school house schoolhouse and an owl in the chimney, completely baffling Miss Pugsley, who knows that her bright, truanting pupil will soon be permanently lost to education. ''The Horseman's'' characters express their psychological state almost entirely physically - which can be frustrating for readers who enjoy the analysis of emotions - leaving abundant room for interpretation. Indeed, the novel as a whole feels spare, with the forced pauses after each chapter manifested in physical empty space, and the scarcity of adrenaline. It's fashionable to talk about 'slow fashion' and 'slow journalism'; Pears is a true ambassador for the 'slow reading' movement.

Further reading suggestions: [[The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena and Jamie Bulloch (Translator)|The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena]], [[The Winter Horses by Philip Kerr]]and [[Disputed Land by Tim Pears]].