Review & Blog Tour ~ Run to the Western Shore by Tim Pears

A powerful novel about destiny, home and surviving in a world in flux

Britain, AD 72.

Quintus, long exiled from his people, has travelled great odysseys in the retinue of a powerful Roman. Though a citizen of nowhere, is a man of reason, fluent in many languages. Olwen, imperious tribal royalty, is rooted in her native land – a volatile warrior, fiercely attached to the natural world.

Given away by her father as part of a peace treaty, Olwen flees during the night, taking Quintus with her. Hunted by an army, the two make their way across the country, living off the land, heading for the western shore...

I started reading and I thought - oh no have I made a mistake. However, I kept on reading and realised that no I hadn't! I think possibly the best word to describe this book is it made me feel enchanted.

There were such beautiful descriptions throughout Quintus and Olwen's journey that make you think and want to stop and really look at the things around you. I really enjoyed sharing their journey with them and seeing how people lived in the days of tribes.

I really liked how both Quintus and Olsen were 'worldly' in their own very different ways. I found that I could not put the book down as I just needed to keep on reading their story and follow their journey.

I highly recommend reading this and you can get a copy here #Aff.

Huge Thank You to Random Things Tours & SwiftPress for letting me participate in the Blog Tour

Author Profile

TIM PEARS is a much-admired, prize-winning writer whose prose has been likened to Marquez, Faulkner and Hardy. His recent West Country Trilogy was a critic’s favourite. Born in 1956, Tim grew up in Devon and left school at sixteen. He worked in a wide variety of jobs: welder, librarian, reporter, archaeological worker, fruit picker, psychiatric nurse, groundsman in a caravan park, painter & decorator, and night porter in Devon, Wales, France, Norfolk and Oxford.

Throughout this time he was always writing, and later making short films. He completed a Directing course at the National Film and TV School, graduating in the same month that his first novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves, was published, in 1993.

In the Place of Fallen Leaves was awarded the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award. Tim’s second novel, In a Land of Plenty, was made into a ten-part drama series for the BBC broadcast in 2001. Other novels include, A Revolution of the Sun, Wake Up, Blenheim Orchard, Landed and Disputed Land.

Landed was given the MJA Open Book Award and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. All of these novels were chronicles of our time, exploring moral challenges as they are expressed in the dynamics and politics of relationships and family life.

In the Light of Morning was a departure, set in Yugoslavia in the Second World War. Tim then embarked on his most ambitious work, a trilogy of novels (The Horseman, The Wanderers and The Redeemed) set before, during and in the aftermath of the First World War.

Tim is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Oxford, and is married to a psychoanalyst. He and his wife have two children. Apart from family life, he enjoys urban rambling and walking the dog (his first listener and a harsh critic) and rural foraging. Along with cinema, sport has been Tim’s other passion. He was a third-rate footballer and mediocre tennis player, and remains a poor ping-pong player. He continues to be an avid spectator of the ‘amazing human invention that is the game of football’.