The Horse Whisperer [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Nicholas Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1995

The extraordinary first novel that is taking the publishing and film worlds by storm, The Horse Whisperer is at once a gripping adventure and an epic love story that weaves an incredible tale of healing and redemption, an emotional journey that explores our ancient bonds with earth and sky and hearts untamed.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Horse Whisperer is a story made in Hollywood heaven. The novel was written by a first-time author, and the film option was snapped up by aging heartthrob Robert Redford for 3 million smackers. Why take such risks on a brand-spanking-new author? The answer becomes clear upon reading the touching tale.

One morning while teenage Grace Maclean is riding Pilgrim, her goofy, loveable pony, she has a horrendous glass-shattering, bone-splintering, ligament-lynching meeting with a megaton truck that leaves her and her four-legged friend damaged in mind, body, and spirit. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, her jaded, brilliant, bitchy mom, Annie Graves (Kristin Scott Thomas in the 1998 film) is working out a wrinkle in her self-absorbed existence when she gets a call at her plush, Manhattan office about Grace's accident. Racked with guilt, Graves makes it her calling to find the mythical horse whisperer, an equine Zen master who has the ability to heal horses (and broken souls) with soothing words and a gentle touch. Just when it seems he can't be found, what do you know, she finds him. He arrives in the form of Tom Booker-- a rugged, sensitive, dreamy cowboy who helps Pilgrim and Grace repair their fractured selves. To add more mesquite to fire, Booker has a way with not-so-injured, attractive, married women--like Annie. As the plot thickens, so does the familial strife, which threatens to undo Booker's healing work.

Like an expert cinematographer, Evans deftly crafts each scene with precision and clarity, sprinkling in ominous signs and foreboding images. For example, in the opening paragraphs, as Annie starts out on the tragic ride, she comes across a bloody bird wing that seems to have fallen out of nowhere. The weight of impending doom is further strengthened by the truck driver's bad luck--he has a run-in with the highway patrol just moments before his meeting with Grace and Pilgrim. These not-so-subtle subliminal messages are masterfully stitched in throughout the story and may compel readers to act as if they were watching a B-grade horror movie, shouting aloud, "Don't go there!" However sentimental, The Horse Whisperer is an engaging read, sort of like a finely tuned, well-edited film. --Rebekah Warren --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

After all the fuss about the multimillion-dollar book and movie deals for this first novel from a British screenwriter and producer, the book itself is a mild anticlimax. It will undoubtedly be a major seller, however, for it touches a number of hot-wire themes: worldly success versus the simple life, the redeeming power of love, the mystique of animals?all set against a wide-screen background of Montana. But the screenwriter's hand has not been displaced by the novelist's creative imagination, and at too many points the book feels manipulative and schematic, the characters under-realized, just waiting to be filled out by star performers. The narrative begins with a frightful accident: teenage Grace Maclean, daughter of nice-guy lawyer Robert and tough, English-born magazine editor Annie, is out riding near their country home in upstate New York on a snowy day, and she and her beautiful horse Pilgrim are hit by a skidding tractor-trailer. Grace is crippled, Pilgrim desperately injured and mentally shattered. Annie takes things firmly in hand, finds a cowboy, Tom Booker, who is a wizard with horses and, with Grace and Pilgrim in tow, heads out to Montana in search of healing for the horse and ultimate recovery for Grace. Not surprisingly, she and the firm but gentle Booker fall in love?and this is where the frequent comparisons by early readers to The Bridges of Madison County were made. This is a much more sophisticated book, however, even if it draws some of the same morals about big-city angst and rustic simplicity. By far the best things are the scenes of horse-healing, which are genuinely fresh, surprising and seemingly authoritative. It is perhaps a reflection on the rest that Pilgrim's recovery is more affecting than the conventionally melodramatic resolutions for the human principals. But it will sell and sell. 600,000 first printing; Literary Guild main selection; Reader's Digest Condensed Books selection; movie rights to Robert Redford; simultaneous BDD audio; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 618 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (November 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786204982
• ISBN-13: 978-0786204984
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (659 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,725,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nicholas Evans studied law at Oxford University after serving in Africa with Voluntary Service Overseas. He then worked as a newspaper reporter, TV producer, and screenwriter before writing four bestselling novels. His first book, The Horse Whisperer was made into a movie directed by Robert Redford. He lives in Devon with his wife, singer/songwriter Charlotte Gordon Cumming.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's the horse?, May 9, 2001

By 

"cstew" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Horse Whisperer (Paperback)

After all the hype I thought this book would be a profound insight into the relationships between people and animals and other people. How disappointed I was when I got almost all the way through and discovered it was little more than a romance novel! Heaving bosoms and all...

I suppose without any hype I might call it an impressive first novel, but I found most of the relationships stereotypical and the ending totally inconsistent with what little character development there was.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The movie only hinted at doing justice to this story., November 16, 2000

By 

LMB (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Horse Whisperer (Hardcover)

Unlike some other reviewers I wasn't expecting this book to be a great work of modern literature but rather a beautiful story that everyman could relate to with a bit of thought. I wasn't disappointed. Maybe the author was a screenwriter and maybe the sentimental story itself is set out to read like a movie plot unfolding, none of that, to my way of thinking, diminished the simple zen beauty of the authors prose which reflected the search for an inner calm in each of the main characters.

Others here have commented on the gore and adrenalin surging accident of Grace and the conveniently named Pilgrim and I from similar experiences found it traumatic - for the horse, but not for Grace herself because her story is really the means by which she and her mother find grace. Her mother Annie is forced to take stock of a life that she fears is not satisfying and which casts an effect on her child and her marriage.

If Tom, in a typical display of the western horseman, seems wooden through a lack of dialogue it is because he relates to the world through the horses he works with, espousing the simple wisdoms of a man who has learned to read what is subtle and unspoken. His loneliness is echoed in the souls of Pilgrim, Grace and Annie.

That Annie and Tom predictably fall in love and betray her marriage vows, in a different rendition of Graces relationship with Pilgrim, is not an issue. It is that only through the catalyst for change in Tom and the nature of his work with Pilgrim we find the key to the characters, that they too must sacrifice the instinct for self preservation to be remade with maturity.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not much to like, June 21, 2002

By 

John Sloan "sloanjohn" (right there) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Horse Whisperer (Paperback)

I started reading this book only knowing that it involved a mystical sort of man who could communicate with horses. This concept sounded intriguing. The novel turns out to be more about the thoroughly unlikable Annie character. She is is a self-centered woman, who makes one grand gesture to help her daughter by visiting the Horse Whisperer. It is obvious from the start that there will be a romance, but I could see no reason why Tom (the title character) should have any interest in Annie. It makes you feel sorry for Annie's husband, who seems like a nice enough guy, but is left behind in New York. The horse is really the most interesting character, but he just falls into the background as the story moves on.
The wild horses in the story could have been an interesting metaphor, but Evans has an annoying habit of using symbolism and then explaining it too. It is as if he thinks his readers are too stupid to figure it out on their own.