The Horse Whisperer (Penguin Readers, Level 3) | 
| Author: Evans
Publisher: Pearson ESL
Category: Book
List Price: $9.27
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Avg. Customer Rating:  633 reviews
Sales Rank: 125419
Media: Paperback
Edition: Abridged
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 86
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
ISBN: 058241637X
Dewey Decimal Number: 428
EAN: 9780582416376
ASIN: 058241637X
Publication Date: February 15, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Amazon.com
The Horse Whisperer is a story made in Hollywood heaven. The novel was written by a first-time author, and the film option was snapped up by aging heartthrob Robert Redford for 3 million smackers. Why take such risks on a brand-spanking-new author? The answer becomes clear upon reading the touching tale. One morning while teenage Grace Maclean is riding Pilgrim, her goofy, loveable pony, she has a horrendous glass-shattering, bone-splintering, ligament-lynching meeting with a megaton truck that leaves her and her four-legged friend damaged in mind, body, and spirit. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, her jaded, brilliant, bitchy mom, Annie Graves (Kristin Scott Thomas in the 1998 film) is working out a wrinkle in her self-absorbed existence when she gets a call at her plush, Manhattan office about Grace's accident. Racked with guilt, Graves makes it her calling to find the mythical horse whisperer, an equine Zen master who has the ability to heal horses (and broken souls) with soothing words and a gentle touch. Just when it seems he can't be found, what do you know, she finds him. He arrives in the form of Tom Booker-- a rugged, sensitive, dreamy cowboy who helps Pilgrim and Grace repair their fractured selves. To add more mesquite to fire, Booker has a way with not-so-injured, attractive, married women--like Annie. As the plot thickens, so does the familial strife, which threatens to undo Booker's healing work. Like an expert cinematographer, Evans deftly crafts each scene with precision and clarity, sprinkling in ominous signs and foreboding images. For example, in the opening paragraphs, as Annie starts out on the tragic ride, she comes across a bloody bird wing that seems to have fallen out of nowhere. The weight of impending doom is further strengthened by the truck driver's bad luck--he has a run-in with the highway patrol just moments before his meeting with Grace and Pilgrim. These not-so-subtle subliminal messages are masterfully stitched in throughout the story and may compel readers to act as if they were watching a B-grade horror movie, shouting aloud, "Don't go there!" However sentimental, The Horse Whisperer is an engaging read, sort of like a finely tuned, well-edited film. --Rebekah Warren
Product Description
He is the stuff of legend. His voice can calm wild horses and his touch heal broken spirits. For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubled ears, such men were once called Whnisperers. Now Tom Booker, the inheritor of this ancient gift is to meet his greatest challenge.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 628 more reviews...
 The Horse Whisper July 19, 2008
I loved this book, and was thoroughly delighted with it as excellent fiction. I was impacted from start to end, even after treasuring the film version. I saw different character development, which was fine for these imperfect people. They healed while the horse did; that was the point. The love affair was poignant, and I felt both Tom and Annie fought their passionate emotions for each other as long as humanly possible. They were both so flawed in their love lives' history of the past, that of course they would get desperately hooked on each other. And none of the surrounding family members blessed it; indeed they were appropriately alarmed at this in their near presence. I thought all of this possible and more realistic that the movie version. Of course, Annie is a cold career person without much of a soul. Montana's scenery, the ranch's wholesome life style, and the injured horse bring about their romantic connection rather deeply. While we think Annie will finally make the right commitment and move towards Tom after a divorce, he has it figured right. These two know they are screwing around, and there are eventual penalties for so doing. Offering himself up sacrificially at the end surprised me, but the guy doesn't want to live without his chosen woman this second time around either! He checks out; doesn't have to, but surprises Grace and the reader completely--with "his choice". We are stunned but there is a baby son as a remainder, instead of an unwanted, surprise pregnancy. They all turn out okay, even if there is still work to be done. These are not perfect people but they are more alive at the book's end than they were at its origin. We have faith that they are better off. Tough stuff; loved it all. And great writing; I don't know why there are any slams at all towards the author's talent. Own this book.
 Utter Horse manure July 17, 2008
Don't be fooled this is not a book about true romance and soul healing.
It's dark, brooding and love manifests in nothing more than primordial lust. There is nothing enchanting or mystical about the Horse Whisperer himself it just seems he's on a quest to get into Anne's pants. Whore whisperer is more like it. This book made me feel depressed like there was a dark cloud looming over me every page I read. Mindless,dark,and paticularly disturbing at some parts. The Horse was not as deranged as the back cover synopsis would suggest, making the character forgettable.
I'd avoid this one, don't look the gift horse in the mouth.
 Everything is in slow motion July 14, 2008
I spent about one hour on the first 150 pages and was disappointed so much that I decided to skip to chapter 15 which was page 207. And only then things start to happen, but not quite! What a slow reading! Nothing was interesting before this far. Everything was in slow motion. There were about 15 lines of dialog in the first 20 pages. I studied literature at university and I guess I know a little bit. I think most of the writers of our time do not know their business. Why should you tell the readers about every piece of your family history, your neighbor's love story, the facial feature of the dozens of characters nobody would care? These are simply a disease of the modern literature. And our readers are just too patient and too polite for this kind of cheating. Yes, cheating! Can you find a better word?
Most of the narrative in most of the novels are full of junk and are not worth one tenth the money you paid. Why should you put up with that? One suggestion: Don't buy anything contains more than 350 pages!
The best way to build characters and develop story is through dialog. That simple truth is still not known or not mastered by most of the writers. How unfortunate are we as readers!
Why should I spend dozens of hours on only 5 pages of interesting stuff and the rest of the 400 page plus book is all nonsense?
It is really a shame of the writers of our time to have this disease to tell too much and know too little (on how to write good interesting stories). They are qualified to write gossip column of the tabloid newspaper maybe, but as writers, they are too poorly equipped with qualities.
I suggest all writers should put the book Love Story by Erich Segal on their bedside in order to read from time to time and start to learn their business!
 "I Hear You've Found Me a Whisperer..." May 15, 2008
I can easily see why "The Horse Whisperer" became a bestseller. It is a poignant story of tragedy and healing, one that moves at a quick pace, manages to be both predictable in its overarching story, yet surprising in its details, and is told in clear - though somewhat bland - prose. It is by no means great literature, but as a holiday or `cold winter night' read, it fits the bill.
Thirteen-year old Grace Mclean is the victim of a horrific horse-riding accident (involving ice, a truck and two panicked horses) that claims the life of her friend and leaves her with an amputated leg. Damaged almost beyond repair, her horse Pilgrim is deranged with terror and pain - but Grace's mother Annie refuses to put the animal down, instinctively feeling that her daughter's ability to heal her body and soul is somehow connected to that of her horse.
Finding no support from any of the local vets, Annie tracks down a man named Tom Booker who is renowned throughout Montana for his skills as a "horse whisperer," a man who seems to instinctively understand and heal damaged horses. When Tom initially refuses to help, believing it to be too late for Pilgrim already, Annie (a business woman who is not used to getting no for an answer) packs up the horse and her daughter, and makes the drive to the Booker Ranch to demand the help that her entire family desperately needs.
It's an intriguing premise, and Nicholas Evans expertly creates the loving but tentative bonds between Annie, her husband Robert and their insightful, but rather sullen daughter Grace. Likewise, the disintegrating relationship between mother and daughter (which was never particularly strong to begin with) is poignantly portrayed as both Annie and Grace attempt to define, and then grasp what they each want from one another. Paralleling this internal struggle is Tom's work on Pilgrim, as he gradually leads the creature back to sanity, with Grace looking on in wonder. Added to the mix is the rest of the Booker family: Tom's brother Frank and his wife Diane, and their three children. Of these three, twelve-year old Joe (who would appear to be more Tom's son than Frank's) forms a sweet bond with Grace and coaxes her back into the saddle.
Out of all the characters, it is Grace that comes across the strongest and most sympathetic. Surviving her traumatic ordeal, the young teen struggles with the burden of her new body and the inevitable change in the way other people treat her. Determined never to ride again, she is furious when her mother drags her across the country in the attempt to save Pilgrim, and it is a very rewarding reading experience to find this young woman find herself again. It is surprising that a male writer can capture the nuances of a teenage girl so well, but I'll vouch for the consistency of her character since I was her age when I first read this book!
The book is at its strongest when dealing with this slow emergence of self-worth, love and redemption between mother, daughter and horse, but unfortunately Evans looses control of his own story when he introduces a love affair between Tom and Annie. In short, it just doesn't quite work. There is no sense of a lead-up to their sudden attraction to one another, and when it does come, it feels more like lust than any sort of meaningful romance. Likewise, some of the prose used in their love scenes is downright cringe-worthy: "To have her so close and yet so inaccessible was like some exquisite form of torture." Yeesh.
This also puts an even more traumatic spin on Grace's recovery. For two adults to act so irresponsibility when a child is involved erases all sense of sympathy I might have felt for their attraction, not to mention the fact that Annie is committing adultery. And since Robert is portrayed as nothing but a good, decent man, the whole thing becomes even more incomprehensible. The forced love-affair would have worked better had Annie and Tom reigned in their emotions (which interestingly enough, is what happens in the movie adaptation) - or if the whole relationship had simply been based on a platonic growth of mutual respect between them.
When the truth inevitably comes out, the resulting chaos is too abrupt and then just as quickly brushed under the rug again. It would be wrong to give away the ending, but it takes only a glance at the other reviews to see that it feels like Evans has taken the easy-way out of a difficult situation. It disregards the feelings of several characters (especially Grace's) and an "epilogue" set several months later tries too hard to convince us that everyone is coping just fine with the upheaval in their lives. There is a phrase that Tom uses during his healing sessions with Pilgrim: that the darkness comes right before the dawn. In the telling of this story, Evans seems to leave us in the darkness, before quickly reassuring us that the dawn did indeed come - without precisely *showing* us.
Evans is sincere in the messages of hope, healing and the worthiness of life that he captures throughout the course of the novel, and despite the unsatisfactory conclusion, there is enough here to recommend "The Horse Whisperer." It's certainly not a book that will change your life, but it is memorable and the characters and their situation are compelling enough to hold your interest throughout.
a solid example of popular fiction novel May 10, 2008
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
When thirteen-year-old Grace decides to go for an early winter morning horse ride with her friend Judith in upstate New York, she expects it to be a refreshing way to start the day. Instead, they are victims of a horrible accident, when they lose control and their horses slide down an ice-covered slope just under the truck, whose brakes also give way in the slippery snow.
Judith and her horse are killed. Grace and her horse, Pilgrim, save their lives, but Grace loses her leg, and Pilgrim loses his sanity.
Grace's mother, Annie, an editor of the prestigious magazine, is in her Manhattan office, when she gets a call from her husband Robert with the horrible news. Annie, who is completely absorbed in her work, ambitious, selfish and distanced from family life, seeing her daughter in the stupor and her gentle husband being helpless, experiences guilt, grief and desire to help her daughter. She realizes she can help Grace only by helping Pilgrim - and she sets out to do so. After library research she decides to employ a horse whisperer - and the one whose reputation catches her attention is Tom Booker. After lots of persuasion and effort on Annie's side, Tom finally agrees to work with Pilgrim and the long period of changes for the whole family begins...
Indeed, "The Horse Whisperer" is not an example of great literature. It does not aspire to be. This novel is a fine specimen of the popular fiction genre -there is a good story, uncomplicated plot with a moral message, describing and evoking powerful emotions in unsophisticated style. How to cope with grief and child's tragedy, how to reinvent yourself and get connected with the people close to you, how to feel more than the power of money and career and how to get out of the vicious circle of modern life guided by commercials - this is what this book was about for me. Very basic, perhaps banal, but true and honest. I read it with interest, very fast and thought about it for a while. There are some artificial situations, the best example being Tom changing his mind about treating Pilgrim. The ending is definitely the weakest point of this novel, it is improbable, unbelievable and looks like the author has run of ideas. I think that Evans could not get out of the tangle he created with Annie, Tom, Grace and Robert and because of this he decided to end the book in this fashion, but it is weak. Anyway, it is a better ending than the alternative offered by the movie, which is horrendous. The movie, although it made the book famous, is much worse, mainly because of Robert Redford, who should not have cast himself as Tom (Scarlett Johansson as Grace is very good and Kristin Scott Thomas as Annie - passable, but Tom is a disaster). If you wonder what to choose, read the book. It is a good pastime.
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