Bumpy ride

Epic western with a brilliant plot is let down by having one eye on literary immortality

- Marcel Theroux

In this moment of cultural panic about the decline of reading, it takes an enviable confidence to deliver a volume such as Tom’s Crossing.

Weighing in at more than 1,200 pages of closely printed text, the novel contains, I would hazard, about half a million words - roughly two Ulysses. It’s also, for that matter, about twice the length of Danielewski’s debut, House of Leaves, which secured cult status for its author on publication 25 years ago.

The novel is not merely long, it’s also a challenging, deliberately arcane work that insists on its own epic status, yet has at its heart a straightforward and compelling story. Kalin March, a 16-year-old nerdy outsider in the town of Orvop in Utah, is a preternaturally talented horse rider. Through a shared love of horses, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with handsome and popular Tom Gatestone.

When Tom dies of cancer, he extracts a promise from Kalin to save the two horses they love, Mouse and Navidad, from the knacker’s yard and lead them to safety in the wilderness. Along the way, Kalin is joined unexpectedly by Tom’s plucky adopted little sister Landry and, even more unexpectedly, by Tom’s ghost. A violent series of events raises the stakes: the evil Orvop patriarch, Orwin Porch, owner of Porch Meats, and mortal enemy of the Gatestones, sets off to foil Kalin’s already difficult mission.