A novel that is as moving and profound as it is evocative of the landscape and period … 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

Observer

Pears has often been praised for his strong, clear prose and his ability to tell fascinating stories without fuss or fanfare. The Horseman is his best work in many years. As a testament to a forgotten generation of countrymen it is unsurpassed

The Times

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 ... The natural world is sometimes antagonistic, sometimes beautiful, but always alive with detail ... I am ready for volume two

Jane Smiley, Guardian

With hypnotic lyricism, Pears describes this bucolic Devon world and the people who inhabit it ... [A] paean to the pastoral

Mail on Sunday

A mesmerising book … An evocation of the pre-First World War countryside, sparely written and imagined with exceptional fidelity

Clive Aslet, Country Life

The most entrancing novel I read this year is The Horseman by Tim Pears. This intelligent and moving evocation of life on a country estate just before the First World War is both down-to-earth and magical

Allan Massie, Sunday Herald, Books of the Year