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

An episode of [The Bookshelf](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/499762704), 26 Jul 2024, 54 min.

Audio: https://mediacore-live-production.akamaized.net/audio/02/0c/Z/75.mp3

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 MENTIONEDPatrick O'Brian, Aubrey–Maturin seriesAnita Brookner, Hotel du LacEvie Wyld, The EchoesKatherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John DonneSinead Gleeson, Hagstone CREDITS • Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullagh • Producer, Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett • Sound engineer, Russell Stapleton • Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown

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