Al Ward is a songwriter and musician who lives in a shack in an abandoned mining town. He is in his 60's, alcoholic, and looking at his life and career in the rear view mirror. The horse appears outside his home one day, old and sick. Al decides to help it but without transport he'll need to walk some distance.
The story moves between his past life as a musician for hire and his desire to help a broken down horse. Sadness, loneliness but hope and resilience. An excellent read.

The Horse by Willy Vlautin is a poignant and moving novel - at moments very desolate but also uplifting.

Al Ward is a compulsive songwriter and, often, a compulsive drinker. And he's unlucky in live.

As with Willy Vlautin s writings, though, there is a great deal of humanity and redemption in the world and even when it has shrunk to the size of a worn-out, blind old horse, it can still blossom.

As usual, Vlautin is a superb writer and makes his characters so vivid.

Highly recommended.

Anyone who's ever read a Willy Vlautin novel knows that you read it in the knowledge that your heart will break a little bit in the process and that it's totally worth it! I had to read 'Lean on Pete' in one sitting as I couldn't take the stress of whether Charley and Lean on Pete would make it safely to Wyoming or not and I had similar feelings with this book - it must be a horse thing!

'The Horse' is the story of Al Ward's life both as it is now, living on old mining land in Nevada, interspersed with snippets of his former life as a song writer and musician, struggling to make a living and dealing with an increasing thirst for alcohol to counter his anxiety and demons of the past. When a badly injured, blind horse turns up at the mine where Al is living, it's survival depends on him and what he decides to do.

I liked both parts of the novel - the present day and the flashbacks of the past. Vlautin's writing is always very readable and cuts to the heart of the matter, making you care about all of the characters and their fate. This novel was no exception and I felt desperately worried about both Al and the horse in the present day. However, I did sometimes feel the switches from the present to the past were a little bit clunky and contrived which took me out of the story each time it happened. The feeling didn't last long but it was an issue for me. Another thing I wasn't so keen on were the lists of song titles that Al had written, it felt odd to me and broke up the flow of the rest of the prose and as the book went on it annoyed me more and more! That said, this is a very good novel and I will be recommending it and all of Willy Vlautin's to my library customers!

Loved reading this moving book….a poetic and deeply moving story about what it really takes to be a musician. A lot of books usually either have a super good beginning or an amazing end. It's pretty rare for me to find one that has both but this defiantly had such a great beginning and all the way through pace that kept me wanting to keep reading like crazy.