Lean on Pete

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Average customer rating 4.8 (16 comments)

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I loved this story, sad but compelling. It gave me a glimpse into a world I knew nothing about: racetrack life. The grit & the longing of the 15 year old, Charlie, was poignant. I also appreciated the clear writing & the vivid descriptions of Northeast Portland, central Oregon & Colfax Avenue in Denver. An author I'll read again.

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Best read of the year for me. I want to write like Willy Vlautin.

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Willy Vlautin has created an unusual novel about a teenage boy from a dysfunctional family, whose temporary salvation is an old beaten up horse from the dying world of thoroughbred horse racing on the West Coast. He drifts from one heart breaking situation to another, trying to find the stability in his life that many of us take for granted. Intensely heart-wrenching and original, the story of an innocent boy lost in the world of homeless teenagers and street urchins really spoke to me.

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I am not yet done with this book, but it's rare that I cannot wait to get back to it each evening. The characters are so rich and well-defined that I know I will miss them when I'm done. I also love that it is set in the Northwest -- giving the setting a familiar vividness. Don't wait for me to finish it. Pick up this book today.

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I read this book specifically because it was recommended by Powell's Books, and I am glad I did. I found it to be a very emotional experience. The protagonist is a 15 year old boy who is a very decent fellow living in a completely indecent world. I found traces of Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn in this story, but the first person narrator, whose name is not even revealed until well into the book, is, unlike Holden Caulfield, incredibly non-judgmental. The writing style is a very direct description through a fifteen year old's eyes of the underside of the Northwest, and the characters, whether it is Charley's father, who disappears for days, or Del, a horse trainer, who cheats on small time quarter horse claiming stakes, have no moral compasses. I cried by the time the book was over.

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Vlautin is a significant voice in today's literature. I love local stories, and he catches the sense and feeling of Portland and the Northwest very well. His simple, direct prose is a perfect vehicle for the intense emotions in this story. I cried, I laughed, and thought I would die if this poor, neglected, desperate spirit of a young man didn't get a break and triumph in his difficult path. I don't remember when a book was so involving and touching for me.

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Great book

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Vlautin's third novel, Lean on Pete is what Carver might have been without the aide of alcohol, cigarettes, spousal abuse, and racism. The novel follows the tragic life of Charlie, a kid who sees his father killed by a girlfriend's jealous boyfriend. Orphaned and broke, this kid takes a job working for a scum-of-the-Earth type, named Del, who races at Portland Meadows. That's where the story takes off. Vlautin has a voice that is simple, and catchy, and perhaps because it's all from the point of view of fifteen year old Charlie, the language flows through the events in a way a child could understand, but in layers only an adult can fully appreciate. The story is both beautiful and sometimes heart-breaking, and the people Charlie runs into are as real, and as unreal as everything else in the book. None of the characters can be discarded, discounted, or taken too lightly. This is by far the best book I read from 2010.

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Willy tells a great story.

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This book stayed with me. It may be the finest American novel I have read in 10 years. An engaging story of loss and redemption written in the clear, direct language lacking in so many recent American works. It has a little bit of everything--mystery, horror, local flavor, adventure, love. I adored the writing, and the story took hold of me slowly, but the reward was well worth the price of the book.

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An amazingly written novel by an Oregon author set in Portland about a 15-year old boy who, despite the odds, searches for a home with the help of a broken down race horse named Pete.

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An amazingly written novel by an Oregon author set in Portland about a 15-year old boy who, despite the odds, searches for a home with the help of a broken down horse race named Pete.

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Vlautin's characters have me cheering for them and wincing at the same time. I find myself squinting as I read: nervous, excited, afraid and hopeful of what will happen next. Vlautin captures place. He captures people. His pen is cinematic, and this novel reads as though there is a big screen in front of me filled with fractured light and characters I want to spend more time with. This is the book that I've given to friends, foes, and my father. I've started going to Portland Meadows, betting the long shots and getting lucky with a trifecta here and there. You don't need luck, however, to read the best book of year, just read Lean on Pete.

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Willy Vlautin has successfully carved out a niche for himself writing about the lives of the down and out, the depressed, and the hopeless. In his first two novels, he used this specific stroy structure with effectiveness, but now on this, his third novel, it is beginning to wear a little thin. It's not easy to rise above constant comparions to writers like Raymond Carver and John Fante and Bukowski. This sets the reader into expecting a certain level, if not quality of work. Willy's style of writing is essentially a lack of style, he writes plainly and simply. There is no poetry or beauty in his words. The emotions you feel while reading his work are visceral reactions, not heightened states of awareness like other authors can draw out of a reader. That said, he used this "style," this spare, stripped down prose to great effect in "The Motel Life", which really is a fanatstic debut novel. He followed up with "Northline," which is also a good read, but is also the book during which the simplicity of his prose begins to become monotonous. He has developed the unfortunate habit of telling us every mundane detail of a character's life with very little attention paid to the internal struggles or fears. He will literally describe a character tying his shoes, brushing his teeth, eating a meal, without any stylistic flourishes. It starts to sound too much like real life...which may be the point, but I want to see real life through a clearer lens. The trouble with "Lean on Pete" is not story, this is something Willy does well. He besets his characters with hardship after hardship and allows them to overcome, or at least, survive. It is in rendering these awful events with a completely unblinking eye that we start to lose the impact of devastation. For example, in "Lean On Pete", death makes an appearance more than once, yet through the eyes of Charley (the fifteen year old narrator) we feel none of his pain. In fact, through out most of the book I was wondering whether or not this kid had any feelings at all. Vlautin chooses not to let us inside his head, Charley tells his story as if numb to all that's happening around him. I want to root for Charley, I want to see him succeed, but it's so much easier to track with a character if you feel, as a reader, that you can relate, or at least understand and sympathize with what they are going through. Halfway through "Lean On Pete" I wanted it to be over, it is more or less the same formula as Vlautin's previous two books. Take good hearted characters, beat them to hell, and have them make it out on the other side...maybe not better, but at least alive. You could combine all three of Vlautin's novels into one volume and not notice any variation in voice, style, or prose. I don't expect much from writers I appreciate, but I do long to grow with an artist. To track with them as they employ new methods, new techniques, and even new genres. Willy seems stuck, which is too bad because he does write well, but it's too...polite. I wish he would branch out and write something furious and burning. Although I was disappointed with "Lean On Pete," I whole heartedly recommend "The Motel Life" and "Northline."

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Lean on Pete is a bona fide tearjerker. Willy Vlautin's powerful ability as a storyteller allows him to craft a story of a 15 year old boy, Charlie Thompson, orphaned by society. This story pushes us through the worst in human life--poverty, abuse, alcoholism, loss and abandonment. Charlie's journey to safety and hope is so filled with the most bitter of life's experiences, one cannot help but wonder how he manages to keep himself moving and living. There were times when I had to set the book down, mostly because the story was so poignant, so vivid and so compelling that I just needed to breathe and process it all. I highly recommend this book. While the emotional depths of Lean on Pete are a big draw, it is a readable book that exposes the underside of the world of horse racing.

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Lean on Pete was recommended in a book review on Powell's website. I ordered it and when it came I read it. I thought at first it read a little like "The Art of Racing in the Rain", but as I read more I soon learned I was wrong, it's nothing like any book I've read. The book is about a young boy of 15 yrs. old living with his single dad who is here one day and gone the next. Sometimes dad brings home a strange women and sometimes he stays at the women's house. Dad likes to move around looking for work where he can find it, so Charlie will just start to settle in and dad decides to move again. So, Charlie Thompson has to fend for himself, even stealing food from Mini Mart's. It's not long before Charlie gets a job at an old rundown race track working for Del, taking care of his horses. Del is one the worst characters anyone could run into, of course, we've all had people like Del in our own lives one way or another. This my friends is where the story gets harder and harder to read, but read you will, because you won't believe what Charlie and a horse called Lean on Pete go through to find safety and happiness. This story will drag you along until you either get sick or start crying your eyes out. Either way you will finish this story. You may love it or hate it, but you'll think about it for along time. Probably, a book I'll read again. Lean on Pete is a story that will get you thinking about the treatment of animals and humans and wonder how people can live like that.