This book, is the heart-breaking story of fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson and a quarter horse called, Lean on Pete.

Charley has never had a place to really call home, his mother left just after he was born, never to be seen again, and his dad keeps moving them from town to town, trying to find work.

It is one such move that lands them in Portland, Oregon, at the start of one summer, his dad starts the day with a beer for breakfast before leaving for work, often not returning for a couple of days at a time. Leaving Charley to his own devices whist he works, drinks and spends time with his latest lady friend. Often leaving Charley short on food and money.

All Charley wants from life is stability, friends, play football, and to stay at one school for a while. A place to call home, really.

Denied this, Charley finds solace in his early morning runs. One day he passes by Portland Meadows, a run-down horse racing track. There he meets Del, an ageing trainer, who gives him a job, and Charley spends most mornings there, along with a couple of overnight trips to other tracks. (Overnight trips his father barely notices.)

Del, is not a kindly figure, in fact he’s a bit of a rude, drunken, washed-out cheat. But Charley bonds with one of Del’s horses, the titular Lean on Pete.

When something happens to his father, Charley steals Pete, and Del’s truck and trailer and sets out across the country in the hope of finding his aunt, who he has not seen for years, but who is the only other family he knows.

Along the way Charley meets both the best and the worst human-kind has to offer, but even when kindness is shown to him, Charley finds it hard to accept, and difficult to trust people. Your heart just aches for him

I maybe painting a picture of a horribly bleak read, but really it’s anything but, and that is down to Charley’s voice. Vlautin has managed to capture, a teenage voice just right. There’s a simplicity in the story telling (think of the “What I did on Holiday” stories you had to write at school), and the only times we really get to see what Charley is thinking or feeling is when he is talking to Pete.

And he’s a good, honest, and likeable lad, who, if the world would just deal him a decent hand, you know would just shine. The depth of character needed to survive like he does, deeply alone in the world, is at least clear to the reader – if not to Charley.

If they’re as good as this, I’ll be certainly searching more of Vlautin’s novels.

Buy: Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin from The Book Depostiory.

Disclaimer: This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Related posts:

1. Review: My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger
2. Review: After the Moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr
3. Review: Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland

“Can there be any great pleasure,” she confided in her neighbour, the Canadian minister for overseas trade, “than to come across an author one enjoys and then to find they have written not just one book or two, but at least a dozen.”

Playwright, Alan Bennett, is part of the fabric of my life growing up, with his TV series Talking Heads and the later plays such as The History Boys, little he touches fails to shine, so I knew I could approach this book with the confidence of knowing this was a master of his art.

A good novella needs to have tight writing with not a word is wasted, and this is certainly true of, The Uncommon Reader, a lightly comic tale following Her Majesty as she’s caught in the fierce grip of a reading bug, late in life.

“…Norman was sulking, behaviour she had seldom come across except in children and the occasional cabinet minister…”

So caught up is she, that it threatens to unravel years of careful work crafting the Royal image, by her equerries and staff. The Queen must evade their increasingly insistent attempts to rein in her new hobby.

Then, the Queen decides, that one, might quite like to take up writing for herself culminating in a final set-to with the Prime-Minister and the rest of the Privy Council, and a cracking last line, where the Queen, quite rightly gets the last word.

Take a leaf out of the Queen’s book and lock yourself out the way for an hour or two and devour this gem of a novella.

[rating:90/100]

Other Reviews to consider:

1. A Striped Armchair
2. Scaling Mount TBR
3. The Hidden Side of a Leaf
4. Things Mean a Lot
5. Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
6. Care’s Online Bookclub
7. 
   

Buy, The Uncommon Reader at Amazon.

Related posts:

1. The Invention of Hugo Cabret ~ Brian Selznick
2. Boy A by Jonathan Trigell
3. Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

Unfortunately the main Source of evil Obadiah Demurral, a priest who has fallen under the spell of dark magic, never quite reaches the point when you are truly afraid of him, and yet this is very dark novel, **spoiler** where even at the end, things are never truly settled. **spoiler**

I should mention here that, the authors day job� is as a vicar. It is the writing style that for me does not work, the author has quite obviously drawn comparisons with his religious beliefs and his books battle between good and evil.

It is here is where I have a problem The Christian content is just too obvious, with characters drawn straight from the pages of the Bible, and passages of speech are obviously analogies or direct quotes from biblical and liturgical texts. (And we are talking very well known and used passages) They just seem like they have been inserted with a large hammer, and remind me far too much, of years of bad Sunday school services, and threw me straight out of the story every time.

As a Christian, I have seen this book in a few Christian bookshops/events since its release. So it seems quite well liked and respected, but I just can’t help thinking that fusing this kind of fiction and such an obvious Christian message is not quite the right way to go, because it never quite succeeds at either of its intents.

In doing a quick check on the author here to check a fact or two, I found out he is the vicar of Cloughton in Yorkshire near Scarborough, which is here i went to do my leader training for when I used to help run my local Boy’s Brigade company, which of course means absolutely nothing, other than it made me go “Hey, look at that!”

Buy, Shadowmancer here.

ETA: In the vein of “Hey, look at that!” I met the author at a signing, a couple of years after making this review at it’s original home on my former blog, and while we were chatting and he was signing, we discovered his family used to live just down the road from me, and when I say “just down the road,” I do mean “Just”! Again not important to the review, but, “Hey! Look at that!”

[rating:60/100]

Related posts:

1. Pendragon #3:The Never War by D.J. Machale | Narrated by William Dufris