User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans The Horse Whisperer is a 1995 novel by English author Nicholas Evans.
The novel starts in upstate New York where a teenage girl, Grace Maclean, and her friend, Judith, go riding on their horses, Pilgrim and Gulliver, on a snowy morning. As they ride up an icy slope, Gulliver slips and hits Pilgrim.
Both horses fall, dragging the girls onto a road and into a collision with an eighteen wheeler. Judith and Gulliver are killed, while Grace and Pilgrim are severely injured. Grace, left with a partially amputated right leg, is bitter and withdrawn.
Grace's mother, Annie, is a workaholic magazine editor, and her father, Robert, is a lawyer. The different approaches taken by each of Grace's parents in dealing with the accident strain relationships within the family.
Following the accident, Pilgrim is traumatised and uncontrollable, leading the people looking after him to treat him badly and to suggest that he be put down. Annie refuses to allow her horse to be put down and hears of a 'horse whisperer', Tom Booker.
She undertakes a long cross country journey with Pilgrim and Grace to Montana. On the Montana ranch, Tom works with Pilgrim and starts to make progress. Both Grace and Annie become happier because the ranch life suits them.
Spoilers AlertDuring the stay, Annie and Tom become close and eventually begin an affair. Despite the progress that Tom has made with Pilgrim, Grace is still unable to ride the horse. Tom attempts a drastic intervention by forcing the horse to lie down and having Grace stand on him. This technique works and horse and rider are reunited. At the party marking the end of Grace's and Annie's stay in Montana, Grace finds out about the affair, and she rides recklessly into the countryside.
Grace unintentionally rides into a herd of wild mustangs that begin a stampede. Tom rides after her and finds Pilgrim fighting with the mustang stallion. Tom manages to save Grace and Pilgrim, but then deliberately gets himself fatally trampled by the stallion, perhaps because he feels guilty about hurting Grace by having an affair with her mother. Grace, Annie, and Pilgrim return to New York to rebuild their lives with Robert, but Annie discovers she is pregnant and eventually gives birth to a baby with Tom's blue eyes.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و دوم ماه نوامبر سال1999میلادی
عنوان: نجواگر اسب؛ نویسنده: نیکلاس ایوانز؛ برگردان: مهدی قراچه داغی، مشخصات نشر تهران، نشر پیکان، سال1377، در359ص، شابک9647497237؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده20م
عنوان: نجواگر اسب؛ نویسنده: نیکلاس ایوانز؛ مترجمها: آسیه رنجبر وانانی، مریم محمدبیگی؛ ویراستار مژگان پهلوانی، مشخصات نشر اهواز، خاتم سبز، سال1381، در111ص، شابک9647497237؛
متن فیلمنامه «نجواگر اسبها» نیز با بازی: «رابرت ردفورد»، در دیماه سال1377هجری خورشیدی با برگردان جناب «محمدعلی فیروزآبادی»، توسط نشر فرهنگ و سینما، چاپ شده است
دخترک سیزده ساله ای، به نام «گریس مک لین» زمانیکه با اسبش «پیلگریم»، برای گردش بیرون رفته، دچار سانحه میشود، و یک پای خویش را از دست میدهد؛ «پیلگریم» نیز آسیب میبیند، و دچار حالت جنون میشود؛ بر اثر این رخداد، «گریس مک لین» روحیه ی خویش را، از دست میدهد، و مادرش «آنی» درمییابد، که بهبودی دخترش، با «پیلگریم» ارتباط دارد؛ از اینروی، به «تام بوکر»، که در گوش اسبان نجوا، و رنج و آلام حیوانات را، تسکین میدهد، روی میاورد، و...؛ رمان «نجواگر اسب» بیش از سی میلیون نسخه در سی و هفت زبان و در سراسر جهان، به فروش رفته است، و در دنیا شهرت چشم گیری دارد، و این کتاب را شاهکار «نیکولاس ایوانز» میشناسند؛ کتاب «نجواگر اسب» در «ایران» نیز، در سال1377هجری خورشیدی، برای نخستین بار، توسط نشر پیکان به چاپ رسید، و ترجمه این اثر را استاد «مهدی قراچه داغی» بر دوش داشته اند، کتاب در سی پنج بخش، و سیصد پنجاه و نه صفحه است؛ و در چند جمله: (داستان کودکی است، که جسم و روحش آسیب دیده، اسبی که از درد دچار جنون شده؛ زنیکه میکوشد هر دو را نجات دهد، و مردی که تنها امید همه آنها است)؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 06/01/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/10/1400هجری خوشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
Grace was riding her horse Pilgrim in the snow which resulted in an accident–a horrible accident that cost someone their life. Both Grace and her horse are physically and mentally damaged from the accident and it will take some time for both to heal. Her mother, Annie, finds a man by the name of Tom Booker who begins working with Grace and Pilgrim. As time moves on, he and Grace’s mom, Annie, find an attraction for one another. The problem is that Annie is still married to Grace’s dad and they are having problems of their own. The accident with Pilgrim has now put even more strain on their relationships.
This is one of my favorite books by Nicholas Evans. It’s written beautifully with a gripping plot I fell in love with from the very first page. I loved the setting in Montana and nearly everything about it. There were a few characters that I didn’t particularly care for, but it was still good. After watching the movie, I’d highly recommend the book most.
4.5****
Rating: really liked it
”There was death at its beginning as there would be death again at its end. Though whether it was some fleeting shadow of this that passed across the girl’s dreams and woke her on that least likely of mornings she would never know. All she knew, when she opened her eyes, was that the world was somehow altered.” ”There was snow. The first fall of winter. And from the laterals of the fence up by the pond she could tell there must be almost a foot of it. With no deflecting wind, it was perfect and driftless” When Grace and Pilgrim, her horse, end up riding with her friend and her friend’s horse, on this morning of first snow, two will return damaged, and two lives are lost. Grace’s life is physically forever altered, and Pilgrim’s as well, but the physical is easier to see and make plans to manage. The mental and emotional toll is harder to see and treat.
Grace’s mother, Annie, is determined to control and fix the situation. To her mind Grace will never truly return to her former self until and unless Pilgrim is also healed. She can’t rest until she finds a way, which ultimately leads to a discovery that there are men and some women - although few of them - who can soothe these wounded animals.
”For secrets uttered softly into priced and troubled ears, these men were known as Whisperers.” And so Annie sets out to find, and then convince Tom Booker, a horse whisperer, to help Pilgrim, and by extension help Grace. It takes more than a little convincing, but she is not a woman who is used to, or willing, to taking no for an answer.
I loved the setting of this story, I loved Booker’s view of boiling things down to the essentials of life, and how easy that seemed. I saw the movie many years ago, and loved it, as well, but I no longer remember the details of the movie, only that Robert Redford was the horse whisperer.
”There were such moments, he knew, when the world chose thus to reveal itself not, as it might seem, to mock our plight or our irrelevance but simply to affirm, for us and for all life, the very act of being.” There is, within this story, a love story, although there are several individual stories which are about love in its many forms. A mother’s fierce, protective love for her child. A father’s tender, devoted love for his child. A man’s love that allows him to let go of those he loves for what he sees as their sake. A girl’s love for her horse that becomes a burden that she carries with her, unable to see anything but that moment, that day, and the damage to this splendid creature. A man’s love so great that he would risk all to protect those he loves.
”And she thought, but didn’t say, what a perilous commodity love was and that the proper calibration of its giving and taking was too precise by far for mere humans.” Many thanks to my goodreads friend, Mischenko, whose review prompted me to move this one up!
Rating: really liked it
This is your classic page-turner and bestseller. Cliched, predictable both in terms of plot and characters. Uninspiring rehashing of themes like overcoming tragedy and adversity; the contrast between the ruthless, stress-filled corporate environment and the simpler, idealised fulfillment found in a ranching/farming life. New York magazine editor supermom just has to go over to Wyoming to find meaning and of course end up the arms of our well muscled, handsome cowboy with his homespun philosophy and wisdom. The sad fact is that I, along with millions of other people not only bought the book but consumed it - not read but consumed - and in one four and half hour sitting no less. If you have a copy, do yourself a favour - save the time and dump the book now, before you too fall prey to this hogwash.
Rating: really liked it
I was sucked in for almost the entire book, I have to say. Loved both the jilted academic husband and the sensitive, manly cowboy horse-guru. But the ending was so ridiculously bizarre that it ruined the whole thing for me. Am I just a terrible cynic?
Rating: really liked it
Yesterday, Annie had stood beside Grace and watched [Tom Booker] get Pilgrim from the [training] pool. The horse hadn't wanted to come out, had feared a trap, so Tom had walked down the ramp till he was up to his waist. Pilgrim...reared up over him. But Tom was totally unfazed. It seemed miraculous to Annie how the man could stand so calmly close to death....Pilgrim too had seemed baffled by this lack of fear and soon staggered out and let himself be ushered to the stall.
Tom...stood dripping before [Grace and Annie]. He took off his hat and poured the water from its brim. Grace started to laugh and he gave her a wry look....
"She's a heartless woman this daughter of yours," he said [to Annie]. "What she doesn't know is next time she's the one going in." p202-203
Don't worry, Tom never makes a disabled teenager get into a training pool with an unstable horse. But what I loved about this scene, at this location, was where this story had come from, how much ground it had covered, and where it appeared to be going. I was incredibly invested in the story of a girl and her horse, both brutalized and traumatized in the same accident, turning to the same semi-magical beast master for healing.
What I was not ready for was the turn the narrative took, even though I was completely expecting it at some point. I mean, this book is
known as a romance, even though it isn't written like one. The whole thing is just terribly constructed. Messy. Miserable ending.
I don't want to spent too much more time on this book review, as I really feel like I've spent enough time reading 450 pages of GOTCHA! and I know jack all about horses. But I have to say, I know an animal torture scene when I read one. I don't care how many apologies Evans pumped into those paragraphs. And I did research it after the fact, because I wanted to know, and it turns out that the horse training climax scene *does* depict highly controversial "training methods." The kind known for breaking horses' bones. Yuck.
So this isn't a great book; there's a lot wrong with it. But I didn't hate it either; he didn't baby his disabled character and that is really amazing. (You have no idea.) In fact I really enjoyed the middle 200 pages. But the last 150 was a bit of a chore to finish.
Rating 3 stars, Spicy factor 🌶🌶
Finished August 2022
Recommended to fans of modern romance, westerns, forbidden love stories, tragedies, animal stories; readers seeking narratives with disabled characters; horse lovers
TW animal abuse, animal cruelty, car accident, loss of limb, infidelity, probably more I'm not thinking of
✔️August Pick 3/10
✔️52 Book Club Summer Genre Challenge: Romance
✔️52 Book Club 52 Book Challenge: a wealthy character
*Follow my Instagram book blog for all my reviews, challenges, and book lists! http://www.instagram.com/donasbooks *
Rating: really liked it
SPOILER ALERT: Details of the novel are revealed in this review.
First of all, I saw the film before I read the book. With many works, that would prejudice my reaction somewhat, but I believe that this book and movie are so much alike that I can offer an unfiltered opinion.
This is the story of a family that has been fractured by a monumental accident. Grace Maclean is a twelve year old girl, the daughter of very wealthy New Yorkers. Her father, Robert, is a lawyer and her mother Annie is a magazine editor, an Englishwoman. Grace's embrace of life is fulsome and the reader is drawn to her immediately. Robert Maclean is also an extremely sympathetic character. Annie, however is a driven woman. After taking over at the magazine, she has instituted a "bloodletting" by firing old staffers and has alienated not only those she works with, but her husband and daughter as well.
The first unfortunate decision Nicholas Evans made was to feature the most despicable character in the book and set her up as the centerpiece of the action.
But the book still begins with tremendous promise. The writing is excellent, the descriptions so precise as to engender the feeling that one is living in the moments and places he creates. Grace is riding her horse, Pilgrim, with her friend Judith at the country estate that the Macleans own. Her father has come down from New York with her, while Annie works away in the Big Apple. On an icy road, the horses panic as a tractor-trailer advances on them, skidding on the ice. Grace is thrown off as her horse Pilgrim turns to face the oncoming semi and literally leaps at it trying to protect his rider.
Judith and her horse are both killed, Pilgrim is severely wounded, and Grace's leg is mangled so badly that it must be amputated. There is severe psychological trauma for both Grace and Pilgrim. The horse is crazed and completely uncontrollable. While Robert reacts in much the way one would expect a parent to, Annie controls her emotions completely, but becomes obsessed with finding a cure for Pilgrim.
That cure comes in the form of Tom Booker, a cowboy and rancher in Montana who is a "horse whisperer". He has the ability to calm and cure horses with psychological problems. At first, he refuses to work with Pilgrim. Annie's persistence, which includes driving her daughter and the horse to Montana, finally pays off once Tom meets Grace and sees that the problem runs deeper than just an injured horse. He takes on Pilgrim as a project and Annie and Grace move to the spare house at the ranch so that Grace can work with Tom as he slowly brings both horse and girl back to life.
At this point, the story has been told so expertly that a reader cannot disengage no matter what. The story has been wonderfully drawn as the tale of a family that has fallen apart, a girl and horse painfully and perhaps permanently wounded and the calm man who can supply the solutions to cure them both.
Unfortunately, it is also at the point that Evans strays from his story and inserts a romance that has no business being in this book. By having Annie fall for Tom, the reader comes to vilify her and see her as a selfish, arrogant bitch. Further, the character of Tom, initially so strong and admirable, becomes a parody -- the cowboy who can't help falling in love with city women. How on earth could this calm and centered human being fall in love with one of the most unlikable characters ever written? It is a complete mystery that has no answer, except that it adds a level of melodrama that brings the book to a complete halt. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if it had merely been a flirtation that Tom turned his back on (in order to work on the horse, which is what the story is really about), but Evans does not stop when given the chance. He creates a little vacation for Tom's ranch family -- to Disneyland of all places -- so that Tom can spend a week having sex with Annie.
At this point, the story has become so thoroughly disgusting that all of the promise has permanently departed. After the week of sex, Grace finds out, of course, and takes Pilgrim out on some kind of crazy ride. It says a great deal that the reader finds their own disgust reflected in Grace. In rescuing Grace, Tom allows himself to get killed. Now, what's going on with that is also a complete mystery.
Lost in this tawdry little subplot is the final cure of Pilgrim, which should have been built correctly so that it provided the denouement of the story that Evans so carefully set up during most of the book. It becomes almost a little side show as Tom and Annie wallow in lust and self-pity.
I guess the bottom line is that every author should have an editor with a steady hand who can say, "Stop -- you're going in the wrong direction." But with the state of publishing any more, it may even have been an editor who said, "You need some romance in this book."
It's a great pity to see a story with so much promise flushed down the drain.
Rating: really liked it
I read this not long after it came out and had to read the book everyone was talking about!
While I very much enjoyed the story, it wasn't one I knew I would "have to reread" at a future point in time.
If you missed it, then you may want to consider this story. The writing was well done, there is a drama which unfolds with some romance. If you love horses, this is for you.
Rating: really liked it
I don't know about others but writing the review of
The Horse Whisperer has proved to be immensely difficult. What I'm writing here is a review about a book that couldn't have been written any better.
Nicholas Evans spins a heart wrenching epic love story that thrives and dies amid sorrow and pain. Tom Booker comes as a healer to a family in grief and heals the wounds that have gone deep into the very souls.
Buy it, borrow it or steal it. But don't miss this gem for anything.
"
Sometimes what seems like surrender isn't surrender at all. It's about what's going on in our hearts. About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not being true to it is far, far greater."
Rating: really liked it
This book would have gotten one star, except for the fact that I actually enjoyed reading about the slow, tandem recovery of the horse and his rider.
What I DIDN'T enjoy was the main character, Annie. I can honestly say I disliked her intensely. She drags her family along by the nose, so certain that EVERYTHING SHE DOES is the best solution for everything, and the fact that the author makes her decisions work somehow makes the character even more irritating. She comes across as self-centered, more concerned with "fixing" her daughter and her horse than actually caring for them.
Okay, that last bit probably isn't fair; it's been a while since I read the book, so I may be remembering my annoyance with the character more than the character herself. Regardless, she runs roughshod over everyone, and then seems willing to throw it all away for someone who struck me as a male fantasy about a female's fantasy version of the ultimate "sensitive guy". And then? The ending. Oh dear, the ending. I can't believe Annie's family was even speaking to her at that point, but again, she seemed to believe that everyone was just going to go along with what SHE really wanted anyway.
My sister says the movie is MUCH better. It would have to be.
Rating: really liked it
If Nicholas Sparks could write well, or if "The Bridges of Madison County" had had a horse in it, the result might be something like this book. I liked reading this book despite the fact that it reads like a movie script rather than a true multi-layered story, I mean it read like a pretty good movie script most of the time. But, I am not a fan of adultery, nor of explicit sex in a book. Nor am I fan of big, cheesy, ridiculous ending scenes that are supposed to tie everything up nicely. I can see why people would like this book; it is emotional and dramatic, well-plotted and paced, even well-written for what it is. But what it is is a melodramatic, manipulative, deliberate emotional roller-coaster ride with this cowboy who is really good with horses and everyone loves him - too much - cue soap opera! (Robert Redford in the movie, looking nearly as decrepit as Clint Eastwood in Bridges of Madison County)
Rating: really liked it
4.5 Tragic Stars!
I will never forget this one, this one gutted me, just the title induces tears & butterflies...and yet I Ioved it too...
Rating: really liked it
Love this book! It's the kind of book one reads and still several years later remember much about. Fabulous story and I think that the ending is the book is way better than the movies ending!
Rating: really liked it
i would never have expected to like this novel, but i LOVE it. I liked the movie a lot, but it isn't one i'd watch again, especially. The book is really well written, very intelligent and full of real emotion. It's very moving without making you feel depressed. Evans obviously did a LOT of research before writing this book, the kind of research you do with real people, not with library books or online searches, but he mixes all this information in with the storyline so skillfully that you feel like he MUST have been a Montana cowboy at some point...
Anyway, this is a lovely book and is especially wonderful for mothers and daughters. I read it while my mother was in her last days, and while my daughter was/is sick with a mysterious ailment; and even though I felt (as I always do with movies and films) that the parents and children resolved their insurmountable problems too easily... at the same time, i was happy and encouraged for them that they did. I mean, i really felt like they were real people. Also, his descriptions of an angry teenager (which are paralleled by his descriptions of angry, petulant horses)are spot on.
He also is very funny and tosses out little descriptions or word combinations that make you laugh, and which surprise you because you were otherwise so caught up in the emotions of the story and the beauty of the landscape he paints.
****
I wrote most of this review before I'd read the last few chapters, and i'm sorry to say it does deteriorate quite a bit at the end. Where everything else in the book feels very "true," the end is kind of unsatisfying and lazy. Nonetheless, it's still worth reading!
Rating: really liked it
Read this because best friend wrote the screenplay. Although I'm probably biased I preferred the movie with Robert Redford. Always interesting to see how the book transfers to the big screen. My friend, Eric, also wrote the screenplay for Forrest Gump for which he took home an Oscar.
