Willy Vlautin's The Horse: drenched in twangy music and heartbreak

Award-winning U.S. author Willy Vlautin's The Horse is his poignant new novel about the life of a lonely country musician in Nevada and his chance encounter with a half blind horse. Plus, bookseller David Gaunt reviews Ammar Kalia's A Person Is a Prayer, one family's story of migration from Kenya and India to the UK; and Wellington based critic and curator Claire Mabey looks at Laurence Fearnley's At The Grand Glacier Hotel, which follows a stormy family holiday set on New Zealand's South Island. BOOKS Willy Vlautin, The Horse, Faber Ammar Kalia, A Person is a Prayer, Oldcastle Books Laurence Fearnley, At the Grand Glacier Hotel, Penguin GUESTS David Gaunt, co-owner, Gleebooks, Sydney – independent bookshop [and one of the founding board members of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation] Claire Mabey, NZ based books editor and critic; founder of Verb Wellington readers and writers festival, co-curator of the writers program at the Aotearoa Festival of the Arts – and she has just written her first novel for children, The Raven’s Eye Runaways OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED Patrick O'Brian, Aubrey–Maturin series Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac Evie Wyld, The Echoes Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne Sinead Gleeson, Hagstone CREDITS Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett Sound engineer, Russell Stapleton Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

The Bookshelf · Australian Broadcasting Corporation