Landed
By Tim Pears
2010
First Published
3.59
Average Rating
242
Number of Pages
Brought up in the Anglo-Welsh borders by an affectionate but alcoholic and feckless mother, Owen Ithell's sense of self is rooted in his long, vivid visits to his grandparents' small farm in the hills. There he is deeply impressed by his grandfather's primitive, cruel relationship with his animals and the land. As an adult he moves away from the country of his childhood to an English city where he builds a new life, working as a gardener. He meets Mel, they have children. He believes he has found happiness - and love - of a sort. But following a car accident, in which his daughter is killed and he loses a hand, the course of his life and the lives of those he loves is changed forever. Owen, unable to work, alienated and eventually legally separated from his family, is haunted by suicidal thoughts. In his despair, he resolves to reconnect with both his past and the natural world. Abducting his children, he embarks on a long, fateful journey, walking to the Welsh borders of his childhood. In his confusion his journey is a grasping at some kind of an understanding of his loss. Powerful, richly evocative and perfectly poised between the hope of redemption and the threat of irrevocable tragedy, Landed is Tim Pears' most assured and beguiling novel to date.
Avg Rating
3.59
Number of Ratings
242
5 STARS
16%
4 STARS
42%
3 STARS
29%
2 STARS
11%
1 STARS
2%
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Author
Tim Pears
Author · 13 books
Born in 1956, Tim Pears grew up in Devon and left school at sixteen. He worked in a wide variety of unskilled jobs: trainee welder, assistant librarian, trainee reporter, archaeological worker, fruit picker, nursing assistant in a psychiatric ward, groundsman in a hotel & caravan park, fencer, driver, sorter of mail, builder, painter & decorator, night porter, community video maker and art gallery manager in Devon, Wales, France, Norfolk and Oxford. Always he was writing, and in time making short films. He took the Directing course at the National Film and Television School, graduating in the same month that his first novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves, was published, in 1993.
