The wanderers /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

This second volume of Pears's "West Country Trilogy" picks up where The Horseman ends. Young Leo Sercombe has grown up among the workers on the estate of Lord Prideaux. Now exiled from that place and from Lord Prideaux's daughter, and in the period slipping into World War I, Leo takes up with a band of wanderers who "live in an ever on-rolling now." He travels through Devon, living off the land, learning, and above all, observing. He is introduced to the natural world and develops his talent for working with horses, including one exceptional horse that he races to victory on occasion. Meanwhile, there are brief scenes of Lottie Prideaux still on her father's estate, learning some of the same lessons as Leo. By the end of this volume the rumble of war is still being felt only at the edges, seemingly setting up the concluding volume. For those who have ever wondered just how far style can carry a novel, this can serve as Exhibit A. From Thomas Hardy through D.H. -Lawrence to John Cowper Powys, the mystical relationship between man and an atavistic nature has served as a crucial component in their work and style. VERDICT Pears's prose ballad manages to make the story, if not new, at least as bracing and possibly as threatening as a Devon stream.-Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

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. Leo Sercombe, banished from the estate where he worked, travels through the West of England seeking relatives, but the need for food and money set him drifting among the local transients, shepherds, and tramps. Leo is a quiet, likeable protagonist; his boyishness, loneliness, and consistent wonder at the natural world enliven the detailed accounts of his everyday labors and odd jobs he gets to keep himself alive. The narrative alternates between Leo and Lottie Prideaux, Leo's former lover and the daughter of the owner of the estate where he formerly worked. Lottie, too, is isolated and unmoored, frustrated by her nebulous position between adult and child. The novel spans several quiet years during which the teens grow older without any communication or expectation of reunion, and some readers will find the lack of narrative momentum frustrating. But this majestic, foreboding novel paints an emotional portrait of a land on the cusp of turmoil. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* 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. He is still a teen when he's cast off the Prideaux estate in shame, the result of his love for Miss Charlotte (Lottie), the master's daughter; once a promising young horseman, now merely the son of a carter (the driver of a team of animals), Leo takes to the road, badly beaten, alone, and without resources. Typical of coming-of-age stories, Leo gains manhood and wisdom on his journey, but this deeply engaging rural portrait also captures the essence of England's West Country in the pre-WWI years. The gentle, lyrical style invites readers to wander, as the setting assumes the role of a character, alongside the people Leo meets gypsies, copper miners, and an elderly homeless man. At the same time, Pears subtly introduces the world's brutality in scenes depicting the butchering of a deer, fistfights, cheating, and instances of injustice and poverty all dark notes set against the peaceful setting. As Leo travels to Penzance, Lottie finds solace in her studies (especially anatomy) on the estate. Her stubborn curiosity, refusal to conform to a woman's role, and reverence for science are reminiscent of Alma Whittaker in Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things (2013). 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.--Baker, Jen Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

A teenage boy scrapes a living roaming the southern counties of pre-World War I England as a girl he loves drifts toward maturity in surroundings of insulated privilege.Time passes with slow deliberation in this restless second volume of the West Country trilogy as Pears (The Horseman, 2017, etc.) maintains his commitment to the seasonal and laboring round of a bygone era. The novel picks up where Volume 1 closed, with Leo Sercombe cast out from his childhood home, beaten and bereft. Near starvation, he's rescued by a gypsy family whose adoption develops into a kind of enslavement as Leo works off his debt, initially with chores, later--when reunited with a stunning white colt and using his remarkable equestrian skills--by enhancing the betting in an important race. Meanwhile, Lottie, the 14-year-old daughter of Lord Prideaux, progresses toward adulthood, attending the Derby (an annual British horse race) and developing a passion for biology. Leo's peregrinations serve as a lens through which Pears presents a succession of impoverished vistas--ruined mines, mean farms--and a minutely observed landscape in which the boy scrounges work, learns some skills, makes a few friends, and is robbed of his magical horse. Weather, wildlife, and rural practices are delivered in detail, from how to butcher a deer to the best response when an owl lands on your wrist, talons first. Avoiding conventional plot developments, pulled along instead by the gravity of survival and impending history, the novel closes with a glimpse of 1915, of war and the irreversible social disruption seeping into this panorama split between Leo's poverty and Lottie's luxury.Episodic, instructive, occasionally resonant, this is slow, lambent fiction that pays unsentimental tribute to ways of being now disappeared from the land.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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.