The riders

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Fred Scully has decided to leave Australia to carve a new life for himself and his young family in Ireland. He labours alone to make their dilapidated cottage habitable, but when he arrives at the airport to pick up his wife and child, only his small daughter steps off the plane. So begins Scully's desperate odyssey across Europe, trying to track down the wife he comes to realize he didn't know. 'A brilliant reflection on the instability of personality and memory, written in page-turning style' Daily Telegraph 'An intricate, magnificently readable novel' Sunday Telegraph 'Makes the senses jump. Concentrated, passionate, invigorating' Independent

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The destructive and redemptive powers of love are the focus of this new novel by Winton (That Eye, That Sky, 1987). Fred Scully has gone to Ireland, where he is restoring a dilapidated cottage and waiting for Jennifer, his wife, and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, to arrive from Australia. But on the appointed day, Billie arrives without her mother, too traumatized to explain what happened during their last stop at Heathrow. Thus begins a mad search through Greece, Italy, France, and Holland, always just missing the elusive Jennifer. Though action-filled, this is primarily a study of the psychic price paid by an open-hearted man who loves deeply, if not wisely. The novel's strengths lie in its richly detailed settings and in the archetypal fury of its portrait of psychic dissolution. Recommended for most public libraries.‘Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Elements of a psychological suspense thriller and a gut-wrenching love story blend into this irresistible narrative, Winston's 13th novel, written in supple, lyrically charged prose. Australian expatriate Scully is a working-class bloke with a ``wonky eye... Brillopad hair'' and a ``severely used face.'' All the more wonder that beautiful, upper-middle-class Jennifer married him eight years ago. The adoring Scully has since followed her every whim, trailing along with her and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, across Europe. Jennifer decided they must buy the tiny, dilapidated cottage in rural Ireland that Scully now cleans and rebuilds with the demon energy of his love while awaiting his wife and child to return from Australia, where Jennifer has gone to sell their possessions. On the night before their arrival, Scully sees a troupe of ghost horsemen, their torches burning, arrayed before the ancient castle keep on his neighbor's land. The next day, a traumatized, mute Billie deplanes without her mother, who has somehow disappeared at Heathrow airport. To find her, Scully and Billie begin an odyssey to all the places they lived while Jennifer was aspiring to fulfill what she considered her artistic potential. Gradually, Scully realizes that there are things about Jennifer he could never admit to himself; tormented by fear, desperation and heartache, he almost loses his sanity. Precocious Billie, who knows things her father will never understand, uses the power of her love to redeem them both. Perhaps Billie is a little too wise and resilient and Scully not credibly protective of her welfare, dragging her into perilous situations. But Winton propels the narrative so quickly that one accepts Scully's obsession and Billie's compliance. Winton is particularly deft in creating the supporting characters in this powerful drama, all of whom assume vividly dimensional form. He also conjures up settings with a magician's hand: the frigid, barren Irish countryside; Australia drowsing in summer heat; a Greek island shorn of tourists in winter; Paris, Florence, Amsterdam. His terse, lyrical descriptions, the throbbing energy of his prose, can illuminate a scene like a lightning bolt, cut like a knife or wring the heart. Readers who met this stunning Australian writer in Cloudstreet or That Eye, the Sky, will find his talent fiercely honed. Author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Winton is one of Australia's most celebrated young writers, and this novel shows why. After several years of wandering around Europe, Australian-born Scully, his wife, Jennifer, and their seven-year-old daughter, Billie, decide to settle down in a ramshackle old house in rural Ireland. Jennifer and Billie return to Australia to settle their affairs, while Scully stays behind to make the house habitable. Several months later, Scully is to meet them at Shannon Airport, but only Billie emerges from the plane. Scully sets off on an obsessive chase through their old haunts in Europe in a desperate search for this woman he realizes he's never really known. What follows is a strange mlange: it's a ghost story, but the ghosts make only two brief appearances; it's a love story in which we never meet one of the lovers; it's a picaresque journey where the sights are never described. Ultimately, though, the story charts an internal journey, as Scully plummets from the safe plateau of his simple happiness to the uncharted depths of his loneliness. A powerful, sad, but finally hopeful novel. --George Needham

Kirkus Book Review

Australian writer Winton (Cloudstreet, 1992, etc.), back for a 14th book, notes with humor and intelligent affection the havoc domestic cruelties wreak on the loving heart. In language deceptively simple and true--his dialogue hardly ever strikes a false note--Winton tells the story of Australian Fred Scully, a man with ``his big heart there in his shirt,'' who comes close to madness as he searches for his missing wife, Jennifer. Scully has a face that though ``severely used was warm and handsome in its way...was the face of an optimist, of a man eager to please and happy to give ground.'' Believing in life's endless possibilities, Scully has in 30 years tried many things- -truck driving, fishing, college--and now, in present time, is rebuilding a neglected cottage in Ireland. The cottage--bought on impulse after spending two years in Europe while Jennifer, a dissatisfied and self-absorbed civil servant, tried to find herself--is to be their new home. And while Scully fixes it up, Jennifer and daughter Billie return to Australia to sell their house. Scully, who is soon befriended by the local mailman, works hard to get the house finished in time for his wife and daughter's return, but when he goes to the airport to meet them, only Billie is there. Exhausted and in a state of shock, she refuses to talk, and the next day a desperately hurt, confused Scully sets off with his daughter to find Jennifer--a wrenchingly bitter journey of body and soul that takes the pair to Greece, Italy, Paris, and finally to Amsterdam. There, with the help of the remarkably loving and resilient Billie, Scully regains his senses, realizing at last that he can no longer waste his life ``waiting for something promised.'' Emotions, character, and intellect so perfectly calibrated that a modest story of love betrayed becomes, in Winton's hands, a minor masterpiece.