For fans of A Star is Born and Crazy Heart, Willy Vlautin's most personal novel yet - a poetic and deeply moving story about what it really takes to be a musician.

'There's a horse', he whispered. 'An old horse that's standing in front of my house. He's blind and he won't eat and I don't know what to do.'

Sixty-five-year-old Al Ward is several years into an isolated stint living on old mining land in Nevada left to him by his great uncle. One morning, a horse arrives outside his home, seemingly unable to feed itself or stay safe from coyote attacks. Six thousand feet up, thirty miles from the nearest town and broken by alcoholism and anxiety, Al must decide what to do.

Intercut with Al's dilemma are episodes from his long life as a touring musician. Beginning in Reno, we follow his chequered career as a touring musician. Beginning in Reno, we follow his chequered career as a guitarist and songwriter, struggling to make ends meet and to survive the reality of a life devoid of the perks and glamour of mainstream success.

A homage to the uncelebrated musicians who make our lives more joyful, The Horse is a gorgous journey of a novel, exploring loneliness, humanity and resilience.

Details

ISBN13: 9780571384778
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of Pages: 224
Edition: Main
Publication Date: 01 Jul 2025
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
Dimensions (cm): 19.8(H)x12.9(L)
Weight (gm):

Author Biography

WILLY VLAUTIN has published six previous novels: The Motel Life, Northline, Lean on Pete, The Free, Don't Skip Out on Me and The Night Always Comes. The Motel Life and Lean on Pete were turned into feature films, released in 2012 and 2017 respectively. The former starred Kris Kristofferson and Emile Hirsch and the latter, starred Charlie Plummer, Chloe Sevigny and Steve Buscemi, and was adapted and directed by Andrew Haigh. Vlautin lives outside of Portland, Oregon and is the founding member of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines.

Reviews

"Willy Vlautin writes about people overlooked by society and overlooked by literature. In The Horse, he tells the story of a tenderhearted man who has a steady talent and a crushing addiction. It is both a work of extraordinary compassion and a really great novel." -- Ann Patchett, New York Times Bestselling author of Tom Lake


"A moving tale of suffering and redemption, The Horse portrays the immense gravity of what it takes to be human in tough times, and the elusive grace that might just be grasped from music, animals, and memory." -- Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author of Horse

"I loved The Horse like I love all Willy Vlautin joints--for its melodic prose and its unflinching heart. This terrific parable of art and aging, laced within the bittersweet story of an old casino musician, is like the literary equivalent of a classic album by Tom Waits or Townes Van Zandt." -- Jess Walter, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Cold Millions and Beautiful Ruins

"There's not another writer out there, living or dead, that I trust with my heart more than Willy Vlautin, and he breaks it every damn time. In Al Ward's love and loss, in his decency, his pathos, and his struggle to endure, Vlautin has gifted us a paean to the power of song. The Horse is another classic from one of America's greatest storytellers." -- Jonathan Evison, New York Times Bestselling Author of Again and Again

"Like John Steinbeck and Raymond Carver before him, Vlautin excels at telling deeply felt stories about characters who are down on their luck. The Horse is a textbook Vlautin novel in all the best ways. . . . Told in spare prose, unsentimental but sincere, The Horse is a moving paean to the healing power of animals and music--and a damn good yarn, too." -- Esquire, Best Books of Summer 2024

I loved this novel so much, though it broke my heart again and again. No one anywhere writes with such power and such stark beauty about American desperation and want, American loneliness and heartache. We need Willy Vlautin like we needed Johnny Cash, like we needed Larry McMurtry--he's essential and every book he writes proves it all over again." -- Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Full Throttle and Strange Weather

"Musician and Lean on Pete author Willy Vlautin captures the American West like few other writers. His prose is always excellent, his characters always beautifully drawn, and that promises to be the case with his next novel, about an isolated Nevada man in his 60s who is visited by a blind horse that refuses to leave." -- NPR

"...enigmatic, beautiful ....The Horse taps a wealth of influences -- Hemingway, Johnny Cash, John Huston's film "The Misfits" - but Vlautin's cadences and wit are his alone, sharp and bracing, like shots of whiskey....He's a scribe of the underclass, reporting along the margins, teasing melodies from noise and silences....Mythical yet inventive, a struggle between man and beast, The Horse follows the playbook of The Old Man and the Sea or Julia Phillips's recent Bear weighing the totemic natural world against the frailties of the human condition." -- Washington Post

"Vlautin's gritty novel....outlines the full circle of destructive creation....Heartbreak is a calling for this balladeer, and `The Horse'...savors its fleeting joys: `When you write a good tune and you know it's good, and you haven't played it for anyone, it's like holding hope in your pocket.'" -- Wall Street Journal

"Vlautin's great gift for detail, for evocation of a time and place, and his empathy are evident throughout. As with a story in a country song, even though you know at the outset how things will generally go, the delight is in the delivery and the details, and Vlautin does not disappoint." -- Willamette Week