The Horse Whisperer

Hated it!!! Read this book because a friend of mine insisted I had to. Then had to hide from the friend until I could get the swearing and frothing at the mouth under control. Sparks Evans walks his heroine right up onto the horns of a moral dilemma. Married with children but in love with somebody new who seems to open up connections to lost parts of herself. Okay I'm interested. Does she honor her feelings or honor her committments? But THEN, he just kills off the hero. She doesn't have to make choices, she doesn't have to deal with consequences, she just gets to ramble on back to her life with a sweetly romantic memory of her fallen lover. BLECH!! SPEW!!! Emotional porn.

A big fan of the film, it took a trip to Montana in order for me to pick this book up. Set in the stunning mountain state, the Horse Whisperer concerns exactly what it says on the tin.

The story begins with a wealthy, somewhat dyfunctional family in New York, who are struck suddenly by a terrible accident involving their daughter. This accident, filmed so wonderfully for the screen, is equally poignant on the page, if not more so. Written in a lot more detail than I expected, the accident is horrifying and suspenseful...all the more worse because you know what is coming. Its aftermath is all too familiar to many a family, but in this case, the mother, Annie, focuses her pain and anguish on the horse. His survival and recovery is the key show more to not losing her daughter, Grace, into a pit of depression from which she may never return.

Thus Annie contracts Tom Booker, a Montana horse whisperer with a past of his own, to help her daughter's maimed and traumatised horse, Pilgrim. Evans' writing beautifully captures this magnificent state, all the more poignant due to my being on a Montana ranch and working with horses at the time. Evans has obviously done his research, and for much of the book I felt the same ardour and enjoyment that I had for the film. However, the end ruined it for me. And I truly mean ruined. Not the subtle, classy and painfully touching ending that the film had (albeit unresolved for some), but a dramatic conclusion that I felt was entirely over the top and unwarranted. Some may disagree, and I definitely have the downside of having seen the film before reading the book. But I am saddened that I did not love the book as much by the end, and am no longer inspired to read more by Evans. It felt a bit like a cop out to me, cashing in on Hollywood drama, which ironically, Hollywood did not deliver. show less

Now I have got to admit that romances are really not my usual 'bag' and even when I bought the book the shop assistant told me to keep some hankies handy, normally a message to put it back on the shelf, but it had been recommended to me so I thought that I would give it a go. Although I remember the trailers for the film I have never actually seen it so had no real pre-conceptions in that way.

The description of the accident kickstarts this tale was so vivid and traumatic that I felt that I had no option but to read it all the way through in one go rather than attempt to come back to it. That said I felt that it was because it was well written rather than merely gratuitous. This also had the effect of you really feeling for the plight of show more both Grace and Pilgrim and just willing them to have a happy eventual outcome.

The relationship between Grace and her mother was well drawn, showing the difficulties that can arise between mother and teenage daughter,(especially so as the author is male) and on the whole I thought that all the charcterisations were well written. I felt for Grace, felt a little sorry for Robert who seemed a genuinely nice guy, Tom was so laid back it was hard to dislike him but I must admit I never could really take to Annie as I felt that she was something of a control freak. I also enjoyed both the desciptions of Tom's work with the horses as well as the scenery of rural Montana but felt that these were at times a little overblown.

What for me rather let the book down was the ending. It was heart-warming to see how well things turn out for Grace and Pilgrim and I had certainly not expected the demise of Tom but. Throughout the book the moral of the story seemed to be one of never give up, live for the day and grab your opportunities when they come along but in the end both for me Tom and Annie did give up and just accepted the hand life had dealt them.

Overall I enjoyed the book despite or maybe because it is not my usual sort of read and I did not need the hankies at any point. There was a good pace about the book and you certainly wanted to get to the end if only to see how things ended but in the final analysis it ended a little flat. show less

** spoiler alert ** I'd already seen the movie with Robert Redford, but I'd heard so many people loved this book and since the literary version is usually far better than the film version, I decided to give it a go.
As I suspected, it was much more detailed. And while I throughly enjoyed the characters inner thoughts, there were far more characters, minor ones, that I found unimportant, added to the mix. For instance, Harry Logan, the vet who first tends Pilgrim's (the horse) wounds, Dorothy Chen, the vet at Cornell, Hank and Darlene, a married couple who throw a party on their Montana ranch, Grace's PT woman in Montana, etc. Why Evans felt it was important to add so many minor characters whose names and relation to the story are so show more quickly forgotten, I'm not sure. Nuance? All I know is a lot of characters could have been cut out and it would have been just as good, maybe better.
What I did like: The details of the accident, Grace's despair and angst with her mother, Annie. And, of course, Tom Booker. Evans has a way of writing men as tough, but deeply emotional. The way romance readers want our men to be! Tom Booker seems to inherently understand so much about life and... horses! And, the love story is much more developed in the writing. We can feel the build up of emotions and the want, the ache.... but boy, we have to wait a really long time for some relief.
What I didn't like:
It is not explained why or what makes Annie's marriage to Robert an unhappy one. Before Grace's accident, they seem content. But after she meets Tom, the story seems to infer she's never been happy with him.
SPOILER ALERT! Grace finds out about her mother's affair, and it is at this point, I prefer the movie version. Tom Booker, such a gentle soul, the same one who inherently understands so much about life … knowing Annie must return to her family, but commiserating with Grace's pain (like it was his own) then puts himself in front of a wild stallion and pretty much beckons the horse KILL him… Yes, in front of the girl … who for months he has spent nurturing!
And thus, the poor kid is further traumatized by his grizzly death. Only pages from the end, the story completely fizzled out for me. Annie, who now has gone back to Robert, reveals her affair to him. The couple separates and she ends up with neither man - which made me angry because she could have stayed with Tom at that point. But, oh happy day, Annie finds herself miraculously pregnant with her dead lover's baby!
Evans should have made Tom remain alive, and the man we came to admire throughout the story. Thankfully the writers of the movie figured this out. In the movie, he lets go, stepping back to resume his life, sacrificing the love of a woman, all the while knowing, despite his heartache, its the right thing to do.
Except for the ending, which I didn't like, and from a writer's point of view, didn't understand, I thought the book was a worthwhile read. I loved the horses, scenes of Montana and the emotion Evans is so good at writing. show less

I listened to the audio version of "The Horse Whisperer" by Nicholas Evans. I have not seen the movie and wasn't particularly interested in the book but my library has a limited amount of books on cassette so I met Annie, her daughter Grace, husband Robert, the whispering Tom Booker and of course the whispered-to, horse Pilgrim. By the end of the book I was sorry they had made my acquaintance.

My issue is not so much with Evans' writing ability as it is his stereotypical treatment of men and women. Indeed, the opening scenes of accident and trauma made me think I had the wrong impression of the story. But, it was all down hill from there. It turned out that Annie and Grace were victims of "my mother works" syndrome. It took removal from show more the big city and entry into the "aw shucks ma'am" country to bring them fulfillment. The addition of a handsome cowboy in the form of Tom Booker certainly didn't hurt either.

Evans allowed Annie to cry more than once in her journey to fulfillment - despite Annie's criticism of Robert's tears over their daughter's accident. Frankly, I wanted Annie to cry a lot more than she did, and I definitely didn't want her fulfilled. Annie was the main character in the story and I didn't like her at all. She was greedy, manipulative and selfish. Her awfulness might have been tolerable if she had been made to pay it. But Evans extracted no payment at all. Instead, she got everything she wanted. This result made me say "Ugh!" and rejoice when the final cassette was finished. show less

This was like a splendidly written Mills and Boon. Feisty woman meets slightly-too-good-to-be-true love interest. There was the added complication of a husband (who was a really nice guy and frankly deserved better), and also a storyline involving an injured child and an injured and traumatised horse.

The writing was top notch, characters sketched with skill and confidence, and I also liked the totally superfluous gag about the girls on the subway discussing the meaning of dreams.

The scene where the horse's treatment reaches its conclusion was curious. Less whispering, more bashing with blunt instruments, and it left a funny taste in my mouth. But I know nothing about horses.

Substance: Starts out OK, if traumatically; proceeds predictably for contemporary fiction (foul language, graphic sex); ends abominably by betraying every principle of integrity imaginable.
Style: Evans indulges in frequent, annoying, and unnecessary back-stitching instead of proceeding in straightforward fashion. Descriptions of the West, ranching, horses, and the people are well-done, but I really disliked his adherence to modern "standards" requiring angst and ego disguised as psychological liberation.

Go to a non-fiction memoir of the real-life "horse whisperers" for a better story.
Or see this documentary about one of the trainers who assisted in the movie, and also another trainer Monty Roberts:
show more target="_top">https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/26/true-story-horse-whisperer-buck-bra...

Monty Roberts: A Real Horse Whisperer (1998)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472232/ show less