Out Stealing Horses

As poorly a written story as the story itself. Thankfully a short read is it's only credit in this, one of my favorite genres. At a loss.

I only read three chapters and I was done because there were a lot of swear words and a few blasphemies in the book.

I opened up this book with nary a familiarity with its author. I only knew that he was Norwegian and a prize winner in his native country. I was immediately pulled in by the still beauty of the pace and the rich reflections of a man in his twilight years who has returned to live in the very place where his life was to have its initiation into manhood, starting with a summer when he was all of 12 years old. I can understand why some readers may be shaking their heads. This is a story that deals with the slowness of deep inner emotions-- not unlike the movement of icebergs making their way in those frigid northern seas. We are given these pieces of Trond and there were times when I stopped reading and wondered why he was so intent telling us about that 12 year old self and that particular summer--until we enter that beautiful and chilling truth of what constituted the life Trond was to live from that time onward. This is a beautiful read--and it's so strangely told that I almost did not get it. All I can say is, it is stunning when the light bulb alights in the dark corners of this old man's soul. (And you will get that moment. So keep reading!) I so recommend this read because it's so seldom that I come across something that deals with emotions between fathers and sons, it's practically a taboo subject.

There are bound to be people annoyed and disappointed by 'Out Stealing Horses', as it is not the traditional narrative they may be used to. Instead of building toward a climactic finish, or revealing a fateful detail that ties together several unrelated events, 'Out Stealing Horses' is a dreamy recitation of memories and the present day, as experienced by an aging widower in rural Norway. The 'payoff', if it can be called that, is not a gratification of the reader's curiousity, but an impressionistic portrait of the sum total of a life. Alternating between the summer of 1948 and the present, Per Petterson writes of Trond Sanders, who is essentially trying to disappear from the world after three years of mourning for his wife. He has moved to the country, and obsesses over tiny details of his new existence. At the same time, he examines the events from 60 years earier, when he spent a season with his father, a former member of the underground during the Nazi occupation. It's surprising how big this story is, considering the fragmentary approach Petterson uses. Big in the sense that every page seems loaded with meaning, as if even Trond's stumbling around his run-down cabin hides a secret parallel with an earlier part of his life, or else foreshadows things to come. This sort of storytelling almost promises a compelling denouement, though if that is what the reader is lookng for, he may feel cheated. Instead, Petterson hews closer to reality, shunning the contrived shortcuts fiction is capable of and portrays a complex man who has no more answers to his life's meaning than any of the rest of us. I found Petterson's style very rustic and refreshing - like a drink of water from a clear stream, or a walk through an untended, leafy wood. Though this may not be entirely apt, he seemed to strip his narrative of any modernity, or at least seperate it from a materialistic point of view. There is nothing concrete in the story to support that feeling, it is more of a general sense I had from his crafting of the novel. Unfortunately, I also found it almost too tenuous in its connections, and some events at the beginning a little too coincidental. Petterson even addresses that, saying (as Trond) after one such event that if he'd read it in a book, he would have disliked it. In one sense, 'Out Stealing Horses' could be considered a coming of age story - a genre I usually am not interested in - but in another, deeper sense, I believe Trond revisits this critical summer in his youth subconciously looking for connections to the life that followed from it. Not so much a 'coming of age' story then, but an examination of the past to determine personal meaning. If there are any clues, he knows that they lie in this remote part of his life, but as I mentioned before, Petterson arrives at the same answers we all do when embarking on such a errand. Because he does so with such a poetic pace and with calmly quiet observations though, it is a sublime ta

How to describe Per Petterson's story of Trond Sander? The book has been likened to Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, but women often have trouble identifying with the Nick Adams character and Hemingway's terse style. The authentic period details and finely honed characters also bring to mind another favorite author, Molly Gloss. But there is a kind of sensibility here that will appeal to men and women alike, as Petterson lets you inside the head and heart of a fifteen year-old boy who has just lived through a wartime occupation without the support of his father. Then his father returned and a strong bond was formed, and then broken again. It is a story - told almost simultaneously - of growing up, and growing old. There are secrets here, some revealed and some not. Out Stealing Horses is proof positive that everyone has thoughts that are never spoken, feelings that cannot be articulated - that every human life is so complex it can never be truly and completely understood. I wanted more of the stories of Trond, his father, Jon and Lars. All of these lives that were so tightly interwoven, stretched tight and broken, some repaired, some not. But that's a good thing. If you want more, then the characters have been effectively brought to life. These people will live in their readers' imaginations for a long time. I have to assume that translator Anne Born did an excellent job, because I don't believe anything has been "lost in translation."I hope we will see some more translations of Petterson's work. - Tim Bazzett, author of SoldierBoy (RatholeBooks.com)

How many times have you encountered those two words in book reviews? How often have you found them to be appropriate? Almost never, in my experience, but Out Stealing Horses earns both of them. The reviews I read put me off--it didn't seem the book offered much plot. An old man telling a coming of age story? Low on my list of things to read. Unpronounceable Nordic names? Not really a plus either. But fortunately a friend insisted I give it a try, adding "Its very short." I took the line of least resistance, read a chapter, and in those few pages I was completely engaged. Stealing Horses turns out to have a lot more plot than one expects and a lot more mystery as well, some of which you have to resolve on your own. The style is spare, but never sterile, and the interplay between the natural world and the boy's emotional evolution was extremely moving in a way I find impossible to articulate. There doesn't seem to be much of a marketing push behind this book, which is a shame, as it is so clearly a 10 Best candidate.

This book is the deserved winner of various prestigious literary awards, and has received considerable critical acclaim as an important work of literature. Translated from Norwegian, the prose is simple although a bit sparse, but both the piecemeal unfolding of the story and the abrupt chronological changes complicate Petterson's novel. The narrative begins in November of 1999, and is told in first person by 67 year old Trond, who has just isolated himself in a remote forest village in Norway where he plans to live out the rest of the years alloted him. After the first twelve pages, in which he does not divulge a whole lot about himself, Trond begins relating an incident from 1948 when he was fifteen, and so he continues switching back and forth from the last months of 1999 to a period ranging from 1948 to 1942. The major part of the novel takes place during this latter time span. Because of the way that the narrative develops, I did not feel that I knew the whole story until I had read the very last line--"and we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt." This line first appears in the second chapter and runs like a refrain throughout the story. The episodes that Trond recalls in a rather elliptical fashion deal with formative events from his adolescence. During this period, he spent a summer with his father in a remote forest village in Norway, learned about his father's resistance activities during World War II, and suffered the loss of his father. Outside of his memories from this adolescent past, Trond tells the reader little about his life. The novel as a whole, however, is extremely powerful. Upon finishing the book, I found it completely logical that a man in the last stages of his life would reflect back upon a time when his identity was formed. Trond's selective memories are inextricable from the essence of the person he has become. Whether he has turned out to be the hero of his own life, the pages of Trond's story (like the pages of David Copperfield's story) must show!