Craig Silvey

It's a very, very special book.

It's so beautiful.

I'd read it in a single sitting and I just devoured it.

It's so gorgeous.

And the scheme of it is a 15-year-old boy called Charlie goes on a road trip with a racehorse that's going to be put out to pasture, put it that way, and he wants to save the horse.

And so he absconds with this horse called Lean on Pete.

And it's just the most beautiful, heartfelt, simply told, but intimate and rich and deep story.

It has a great deal of sophistication.

You know, I'd always wanted to write a novel with quite a naive voice.

And Charlie, the narrator of Lean on Pete, just has such a disarmingly simple voice.

narrative voice, but the book lacks no sophistication for it.

And it was something that gave me a great deal of inspiration when I approached Sam Watson's voice in Honeybee.

And so it remains a really influential book for me, and I love it to pieces.