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Halo: A David Higham Prize Winner – An Ethereal Cowboy Western on the Oregon Trail
A tale of the Old West as it has seldom been imagined before-authentic, frontier-harsh, and ethereal. Scrag, a young man on the trail to Oregon, meets Justly, a young woman, and her mother and is drawn into their lives. Winner of the David Higham Prize as the best first novel published in the U.K. or British Commonwealth.
- GenresFiction
286 pages, Paperback
First published August 27, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 8, 2013
I don't know if I liked this book so much because I'm from Oregon or not, but it is a wonderful tale and the characters are well developed and you really care about them. I know that when I finished this book I wanted to read it all over again and that doesn't happen very often.
January 26, 2021
4.5
I really enjoyed this book, especially the first part. I came to love the characters and the warm, loving atmosphere. So even though there were a few things that could have spoiled it for me and were a little repetetive and over the top at times, I found myself forgiving it and just enjoying :)
I really enjoyed this book, especially the first part. I came to love the characters and the warm, loving atmosphere. So even though there were a few things that could have spoiled it for me and were a little repetetive and over the top at times, I found myself forgiving it and just enjoying :)
November 29, 2021
A very good atmospheric novel set in the Old West, narrated by the boy Scrag who’s on the verge of manhood. It’s 1859 when he joins the Oregon wagon train, making friends with the beautiful Lorelei, her daughter Justly, and Sylvester, a poet and pioneer photographer.
Scrag discovers sex and the strange power that pictures and poems possess. We also meet a cast of well-drawn characters, not least the preacher they dubbed Thou-Wert, and Daniel, who had been to the town of Halo before, a town the wagon train hitches up at after being lost. Halo is a town that festers with hate and suspicion. The lightness of the first part is overshadowed by the cloud of impending doom that hovers in Halo.
An exceptional first novel, this won the David Higham Prize for Fiction. Readers who liked True Grit might like this.
Scrag discovers sex and the strange power that pictures and poems possess. We also meet a cast of well-drawn characters, not least the preacher they dubbed Thou-Wert, and Daniel, who had been to the town of Halo before, a town the wagon train hitches up at after being lost. Halo is a town that festers with hate and suspicion. The lightness of the first part is overshadowed by the cloud of impending doom that hovers in Halo.
An exceptional first novel, this won the David Higham Prize for Fiction. Readers who liked True Grit might like this.
August 16, 2017
I have just one question after reading this book: Why hasn't it been made into a movie? This lyrical haunting book on a slice of westward migration will resonate with me for some time. There is no Hollywood ending to this thought provoking novel on what matters and what is real. At times I had to put it down because it pained me so much. At other times, I read at a gallop to "watch" this unfolding and coming of age of the protagonist. Even though Halo does not exist, the author made the location, the unplanned journey towards and the characters so real, it is hard not to believe it must have existed in some form.
August 3, 2022
3.5.
With poetry and photography portraying "how it was", a wagon train crawls across the prairie to Oregon in 1859. Scragg and Lorelei and her daughter Justly form a bond and then Sylvester the photographer joins their intimacy, opening their minds and becoming their teacher of poetry and words. The travel seems incidental, most of the action has nothing to do with the actual movement of the wagon train. I was initially more interested in what might happen, but I realized halfway through that it was pretty predictable.
With poetry and photography portraying "how it was", a wagon train crawls across the prairie to Oregon in 1859. Scragg and Lorelei and her daughter Justly form a bond and then Sylvester the photographer joins their intimacy, opening their minds and becoming their teacher of poetry and words. The travel seems incidental, most of the action has nothing to do with the actual movement of the wagon train. I was initially more interested in what might happen, but I realized halfway through that it was pretty predictable.
October 15, 2017
Despite being set in the wild west, it's almost a Jane Austen novel, because it's about the characters of the people, and their interactions. Beautiful prose, but a bit slow. There's a lot about beauty, and being human. But the plot gets moving towards the end, and it's violent in a quiet, unpleasant way.
January 28, 2015
This was a good, poetic read that I enjoyed very much. However, he talks a lot about breasts, and that gets a bit unnerving. I don't know if it's just a guy thing (I have read other books from men (ahem, John Irving) that talk a lot about breasts) or if it had some deeper meaning. I think the title should have reflected their journey rather than the one stop they made, although significant.
May 9, 2015
page 158:
"This man is rawhide
but his heart is kid glove.
This boy is new leather
I soap with my love."
"This man is rawhide
but his heart is kid glove.
This boy is new leather
I soap with my love."
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews