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    Out Stealing Horses
    Out Stealing Horses
    Out Stealing Horses
    Audiobook7 hours

    Out Stealing Horses

    Written by Per Petterson

    Narrated by Richard Poe

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Multiple award-winning author Per Petterson delivers an eloquent, meditative novel. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond Sander lives secluded in a far corner of Norway. Casting his mind back to 1948, he recalls a horse stealing prank with his best friend that turned tragic and changed his life forever. ". on a par with . Steinbeck, Berry, and Hemingway, and its emotional force and flavor are equivalent to what those authors can deliver, too."-Booklist, starred review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 20, 2008
    ISBN9781436133128
    Out Stealing Horses
    Author

    Per Petterson

    Per Petterson is the author of five previous novels, which established him as one of Norway's best fiction writers. Petterson worked as a manual laborer, spent twelve years as a bookseller, and was a translator and literary critic before becoming a full-time writer. His novel Out Stealing Horses won the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was named one of the best books of 2007 by the New York Times Book Review and Time.

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    Reviews for Out Stealing Horses

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    • 4/5
      Lyrical story of a Norwegian man reflecting on his life and family and a tragedy nearby. Time periods are mixed up but the writing is well done. Stretches from German occupation in his youth until when he is about 67. There are a couple of horses too, but no real stealing. It was an enjoyable read.
    • 4/5
      His spare language ripples and tumbles through the story, drawing the reader in and on.
    • 5/5
      Trond Sander, at 67 years old, is a simple man living alone with his dog, Lyra, deep in the Norwegian woods. He likes the quiet. He loves the solitude. It's as if he has run away from memories. In reality, he has done just that. Trond lost his sister and wife in one month three years prior. That was when he stopped talking to people. His silence is profound until he meets a stranger in the woods near his cabin. Only this stranger carries the very memories Trond has been trying to escape. Lars is a member of a family with entangled deep tragedies and Trond knows them well. Petterson is able to move Trond from past to present with remarkable grace. Trond as a teenager versus Trond, the aging adult in Norway's breathtaking landscape. Like any good drama, there is violence, illicit love, abandonment, and atonement with surprises along the way. I hope the movie is as spectacular as the book.
    • 4/5
      Book on CD performed by Richard Poe3.5*** From the book jacket:Out Stealing Horses tells the story of Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man who has moved from the city to a remote, riverside cabin, only to have all the turbulence, grief, and overwhelming beauty of his youth come back to him one night while he’s out on a walk. From the moment Trond sees a strange figure coming out of the dark behind his home, the reader is immersed in a decades-deep story of searching and loss.My reactions:I remember when this book was launched and all the buzz around it. It’s been on my tbr ever since but somehow, I never got around to reading it … until now. Petterson has crafted an atmospheric, character-driven story of one man’s looking back on his coming-of-age summer when he was almost 15 and living with his father in a remote cabin on a river in eastern Norway, just on the border with Sweden. The story moves back and forth between the present day, when Trond is a retiree, alone, and facing the last leg of his journey of life, and the summer of 1948 when he was a young man who idolized his father and relished in the joys of nature, exploring with his friend Jon. But as the novel goes back in time to Trond’s youth, it becomes clear that he is facing the truth of those events – events that he was not fully aware of or prepared to deal with as a fifteen year old.I loved the many literary references, because Trond is quite the reader, and the young Trond is particularly fond of American Westerns. The title refers to the escapades of the horse rustlers of many a Western-genre novel. And both Trond and Jon are eager to give in to their vivid imaginations. But as Trond grows he comes to realize that adventure isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be, and there can be a very real human toll to giving in to desire and youthful exuberance. A movie was made, though I’ve never seen it. I imagine it was cinematically beautiful, but this is such a contemplative book I can’t imagine it would translate well to film. Richard Poe does a fantastic job of narrating the audiobook. The shifts in time are not easy to handle, but Poe manages to give the young Trond and the mature Trond different voices, which helped this reader make the transitions.
    • 3/5
      Out Stealing Horses has beautiful moments and images. Petterson is a craftsman of language and builds fundamental characteristics of landscape and action into memorable and unique instances. Yet, I found that as brilliant as some instances in the book were they did not cohere, combined with the bizarre post-modern flourishes (the narrator admits coincidences happen too easily in novels but a coincidence happens too easily to him! huzzah) made it hard to get behind the story. I'll give Petterson another go but I wouldn't pick this one up again too fast.
    • 4/5
      "Time is important to me now, I tell myself. Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but be only time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking."This is a tricky one to review. I finished it up in Saturday, but I needed to let it marinate before sharing my thoughts just so I could order them properly. The writing is gorgeous, there is no doubting that. The story meanders between past and present, but that makes sense as our protagonist is in his seventies and spends most of the story alone with his thoughts. It's ethereal and slightly sinister and builds tension and momentum as it goes along. The difficulty I had was with the ending, which, I am not going to lie, was a huge disappointment to me. I feel cheated. Am I sorry I read it? No. Because the writing is just so lovely and the sense of place is so palpable, so solid and true. And the ending is realistic, really it is, it's just that we spent all that time building up to something more. *sob*"It was a long way off, the blazing hot day, when I opened the door and went out to the yard in my long boots. No-one there and almost cool, but not dark now, it was a summer's night, and above me the clouds split and opened up as they swept at great speed across the sky, and the pale light came flickering down so I could easily make out the path to the river. The water flowed more swiftly now after the drenching rain, running higher up the boulders along the banks, and it swelled and rocked with a faint shine of silver, I could see it from some way off, and the sound of the river running was the only sound I heard. The boat was not in its place. I waded a few paces out into the stream and stood there listening for the sound of oars, but there was only the water sweeping round my legs, and I could see nothing either up river or down. The timber piles were there, of course, and their scent was strong in the humid air, and the crooked pine with the cross nailed to its trunk was there, and the fields were there on the other side from the river bank up to the road, but only the clouds in the sky were on the move, and the flickering light. It was a weird sensation to be standing in the night alone, almost the feeling of light or sound through my body; a soft moon or a peal of bells, with the water surging against my boots, and everything else was so big and so quiet around me, but I did not feel abandoned, I felt singled out. I was perfectly calm, I was the anchor of the world. It was the river that did that to me, I could immerse myself in water up to my chin and sit not moving, with the current pounding away and pulling at my body, and remain the person I was, still be the anchor."
    • 4/5
      Set in Norway, the book jumps back and forth between present day when Trond, now a 67yo widower moves into the boonies where he had lived with his father during the summers as a teen in the 1940s. Jumps back and forth, without warning, but was good at keeping you guessing. The title refers to a summer prank of really stealing horses, as well as a code word during the war when his father was a courier with info to Swedish recipients when Norway was occupied.
    • 1/5
      Too thinky. Too suggesty. When plot does happen, it lands like a ton of bricks. About half dozen too many tragedies.
    • 4/5
      It was a slow, satisfying read; a story without much plot but with a lot of depth. A man who has recently lost his wife takes himself to a relatively remote farm in Norway similar to the one where he spent summers as a boy, determined to live alone and be as independent as possible for the time left to him. As he prepares for his first winter his mind takes him back to scenes from his childhood, and we learn very gradually about the days he spent with his father in the woods, the life lessons, both intended and not so, that he learned back then. It's a very Scandinavian sort of story, with cold and loneliness almost palpable, and the theme of abandonment threads through both past and present. There is loss, but there is also acceptance. It could have been depressing, but it struck me as simply realistic. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      At age 67 Trond moves to a remote village far in the east of Norway. A walk in the first snow with his dog Lyra brings back a jumble of memories from his youth, a summer in a similar village spent with his father shortly after the war and the discoveries made about the war, his father, neighbors and felling logs. A profound read, intense but not boring or trivial, but revelatory about growing older and memories.
    • 4/5
      If you actually read my reviews regularly (hi mom), you may have noticed that I'm not writing reviews regularly. I've been finding it difficult lately. You see, more than five years ago I began working part-time so that I could focus on being a writer. At the time I had a nearly completed novel and dozens of stories that I intended to publish. Also, I thought I could use all my spare time to keep the house immaculate and also solve the world's problems. Five years later I can say I did a pretty good job at keeping up with the dishes and laundry. You see, having all the time in the world did not work for this writer. And so, I decided (very grudgingly) to go back to work full-time. I figured I couldn't be any less productive of a writer.The thing is, I'm having a really tough time adjusting. I don't remember how I did it before. And so, I've been slacking on everything. While I continue to read—I do work at a library, after all—my reviews keep pilling up. Seeing all the books I have yet to write something about is almost too stressful.Apparently, I read this novel, Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson sometime earlier this year. Of everything that stood out about the novel, here's what I remember: 1) the protagonist is an elderly gentleman looking back on his life in Norway; 2) the narrative is completely non-linear; 3) there are some gorgeous passages through this novel.1) Trond is the nearly seventy -year-old man who is reflecting on his life. He takes his time getting around to all the details of his life (see 2), but does so with enthralling description (see 3). Some of Trond's reflections are quite tragic, and these are the stories that really make the plot interesting. Largely, Trond's narrative lacks much in the way of action.2) I learned while reading Out Stealing Horses that Per Petterson is a writer who plans nothing. He begins a story without a plan and just writes. This is what we call writing by the seat of your pants. That explains why this narrative is all over the place, but it doesn't make it any less difficult to follow. Personally, I find the style makes for a less-than-pleasant read and that the final payoff on this particular novel was lacking.3) Out Stealing Horses is a language-driven story. I realize that it has been translated from the Norwegian, so my judgment in regards to its mastery of language is based entirely on the English translation. The sentences in this novel are quite simple, as you'd expect from a character such as Trond, but that doesn't keep them from carrying a certain rhythm and depth that really stand out. Take, for example, this passage:There was a smell of roasting meat and coffee in the air, and the smell of smoke, and timber and heather and sun-warmed stones and some special scent I had not noticed anywhere else than by this river, and I did not know what it was made of if not a combination of all that was there; a common denominator, a sum, and if I left and did not return I would never be able to experience it again.For what it's worth, that's what I remember all this time later of Out Stealing Horses. This is far from a thorough or wonderfully written review, but I'm slacking. (If you think this is bad, you should see the state of the dishes in my kitchen right now.)
    • 4/5
      Very interesting, and quite evocative of the Scandinavian atmosphere, which was great. However I found that I didn't like Trond very much, as he seems unable to form ongoing relationships. He's so self-contained. It's hard to get close to him, in my opinion. There were also some nasty images in the story (eg Jon smashing the egg and nest), and Trond seemed so passive in his responses, which didn't really help me to get to like him. (I like his daughter much more.)
      The little mantra he learned from his father ('we get to choose how much something hurts us' is the gist) suffers a little from being so unqualified. I can see that Trond internalised this idea, and that he's closed himself up so that he doesn't have to hurt. In the long run, though, such sayings are very limited as life guides because they don't lend themselves to qualification - to if and but and when - or to intensification - some victims/sufferers actually don't get to choose how much pain they will feel. (the fact that my mother is dying from a brain tumour may be colouring my responses here, just so you know; you might feel very differently about it.)
      A smallish quibble over a very interesting, well-written book.
    • 5/5
      Silence In a World Full of Sound: "Pferde Stehlen" by Per Petterson Published 2006.

      “Eigentlich wollte ich nur noch schlafen. Ich achte sehr auf die Stunden, die ich zum Schlafen brauche, es sind nicht mehr so viele, aber ich brauche sie ganz anders als früher. Eine Nacht ohne ausreichend Schlaf wirft noch tagelang Schlagschatten, macht mich reizbar und bremst meinen Schwung. Dazu fehlt mir die Zeit. Ich muss mich konzentrieren. Dennoch setzte ich mich wieder auf, schwang die Beine aus dem Bett, stellte die Fusse auf den Boden und suchte im Dunkeln nach meinen Kleidern, die über dem Rücken eines Sprossenstuhls hingen. Ich hielt die Luft an, als ich merkte, wie kalt sie waren. Dann lief ich durch die Küche in den Gang, zog die alte Seemannsjacke über, nahm die Taschenlampe vom Brett an der Wand und ging hinaus auf die Treppe. Es war stockdunkel. Ich machte die Tür noch einmal auf und schaltete die Aussenbeleuchtung an. Das half. Die rote Wand des Gerätschuppens warf einen warmen Wiederschein auf den Hof.” (Page 13)

      My loose translation:

      (All I wanted was to sleep. I have focused my attention on the hours I get, and although they are not many, I need them in a completely different way than before. A night without enough sleep throws dark shadows for many days ahead and makes me crabby and slows my drive. I have no time for that. I need to concentrate. Nevertheless, I sat up in bed again, swung my legs in the pitch black to the floor and found my clothes over the back of the post chair. I gasped when I felt how cold they were. Then I went through the kitchen and into the hall and pulled on my old nautical jacket, took the torch from the shelf and went out onto the steps. It was pitch black. I opened the door again, and switched on the outside light. That helped. The red-painted utility shed wall threw a warm glow across the yard.)

      I confess. I’m not able to write about this novel. If you're into reading an attempt at writing a quasi-review, read the rest on my blog.
    • 5/5
      A solid 5-star, well-written book -- one I hope to read again in coming years with the same (or different!) sense of awe. I am a long-time fan of Per Petterson's works, and I've saved this one -- clearly his masterpiece judging by the jacket reviews -- for a couple of years while enjoying and checking off his "lesser" novels.I brought Out Stealing Horses to Norway on vacation -- a perfect book for cafe reading in Oslo, I thought. But it began slowly, proceeded slowly, and I brought it back home having very unenthusiastically finished just the first two chapters in fits and starts. Uh-oh, classic signs of an agonizing slog ahead! Oslo itself plays a small but important role in the novel, so maybe that's why it was impossible for me to get into the book while there?Several days after returning home from vacation, I started over, free of urban Norwegian distractions, and I fell into Petterson's storytelling rhythm. The book rarely picks up the pace -- it's a slow-burn story, meandering ponies instead of galloping thoroughbreds. If you don't care for that sort of thing, keep browsing. But once I got past the first 30 pages, I found the turns of phrase, the protagonist's a-ha observations, the various heartbreaking, life-shattering moments and the sad/beautiful conclusion all effective and entertaining despite (because of?) the glacial pacing. In fact, quite a lot happens over the course of 238 pages -- but just a few key moments play out quickly (thrillingly! breathlessly!), the way out-of-control events can overwhelm us, shaking us out of the comfort zone of an otherwise ordinary life. When those moments arrived in the story, I was riveted.There are many worthy plot summaries elsewhere; I will toss out a few themes as a nod to the amateur reviewer's time-honored practice of helpfully boiling down complex works to just a few bullet points. - It's a coming-of-age story: Trond, the 67-year-old central character, reviews his life, mainly returning to the summer he was 15. The events of that year defined him -- in ways he still struggles to understand decades later.- It's a Norway story: Winter is coming (!) and a lack of preparation equals suffering, if not certain death. It's also a lone man's meditation on choosing to live alone in a remote area. But the threat of being snowed in -- cut off from civilization, food, and supplies -- is paramount.- It's a World War II story: Norway's occupation during World War II is not the main theme or time period of the novel, but the characters' fates are absolutely affected by events and choices made during and immediately after the war. - It's full of surprising appearances and disappearances. There are not a lot of characters in the book. But a fair number of friends, neighbors and family members die or leave -- or arrive -- when least expected.- Yes, there are horses -- the same two horses, it turns out, at the beginning and the end of the novel. But a lot happens in between the two rides, thanks to artfully deployed flashbacks.- Out stealing horses: "You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means." (In fact, nearly all the words mean something else, since I read the original Norwegian novel in an English translation.)As with any rich work, this one is actually about pain and suffering. It is also about choices, and whether we truly make them or have them thrust upon us by others. Trond, the narrator, recalls a time in childhood when his father assigned him the task of picking thistles out of their yard. He complied, but stopped well before finishing the job because it hurt so much without gloves. His father reached out bare-handed and grabbed bunches of thistles without showing any sign of discomfort. After a while, he leaned over and gave his son what was clearly intended as valuable advice: "You decide when it hurts."
    • 4/5
      I think this is a book that deserves to be savoured rather than dipping in and out of it over too long a period like I did. I enjoyed the beautiful writing and the slow, quiet pace of the book which would normally tick all my 'book love' boxes, but somehow it didn't grab me as much as it seems to have grabbed everyone else.I definitely think this is partly attributable to reading it during a particularly busy and distracted few weeks. Days elapsed in between snatched readings, and I think I lost something from my reading experience as a result.Essentially this is a tale of a man in his 60s who has taken himself off to a cabin in a semi-remote part of Norway to live out the rest of his days in peace and simplicity away from the emotional pressures of family and life in general. His nearest neighbour turns out to randomly be an acquaintance from his childhood, which stirs up many long stored away memories, some idyllic, others difficult.I enjoyed the chapters returning to his childhood, but felt that a few potentially gripping story threads fell a little flat in the end. I appreciate that the author was deliberately wanting to leave some loose ends, but it felt a little like getting engrossed in a newspaper article only to find the concluding page is missing.There were interesting emotions and feelings at play, but these were written in a male Men-Are-From-Mars-don't-dwell-on-your-emotions-too-much kind of way, and as a result I didn't empathise with the main protagonist as much as I could have done.4 stars - worth a read, but by the end of the year I feel I'll have forgotten much about it.
    • 3/5
      Atmospheric but timelines a little too jumbled for my liking
    • 5/5
      This is a quiet but deep book about an older man who leaves his life and family behind to retire to a cabin in the country in Norway. A chance encounter with a neighbor who he knows from his childhood brings up all sorts of memories, mainly of his father and a summer they spent together in the country during 1948 when he was a teenager. The book meanders through Trond's memories and his current thoughts about aging and craving solitude. I thought the writing was beautifully paced and a good mix of introspective and intriguing. In this book, I liked the things that the author left unexplained or only hinted at. I think it's a book I'll be thinking about for quite a while.
    • 5/5
      At 67, three years after the deaths of his wife and sister, Trond Sander has retreated to a small house on a river in the sparsely populated far east of Norway. He has determined to live alone with only his dog Lyra as a companion.All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this. Even when everything was going well, as if often did. I have been lucky....I could suddenly get a longing to be in a place where there was only silence.He has not completely cut himself off from civilization; he goes into the nearby town for supplies and he has a car and a radio, though he chooses to eschew television and is ambivalent about hooking up to the telephone service. He spends his days getting the place in order, fishing, and walking his dog until one night his peace is disturbed by a neighbor whistling for his straying dog, and he goes out to assist him. He recognizes the neighbor as someone from his distant past, and the recognition sets into motion the opening up of his memory-hoard, and we encounter a man reaching for his adolescence, his experience during the Nazi occupation, his parents, and an old friendship.The novel unfolds as a series of revelations, some shocking, some subtle -- it has the quality of a investigative mystery, but a highly lyrical and beautifully written one. It is also a meditation on the rites of passage of adolescence and of aging. As in much Scandinavian writing, a focus on the struggle to live within nature, always tending carefully to one's tools, is central to the gestalt of the book.Only a few loose ends took a half star off my perfect rating. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      a wonderfully written book, full of the inner life of an aging man, living in the wilderness in Norway, reminiscing about his life, including what happened during the war.
    • 3/5
      I'll fully admit that I probably didn't "get" this book; while I was charmed in the telling, it ended in semi-disappointment.

      The book covers a wide arc of time, drawing from the two narratives set in the past and present. For the modern storyline, Per Petterson does a great job of capturing the inner life of someone with little left of social life - someone who experiences the world as physical and concrete, rarely clouded by trying to discern the intentions or indications of others. On the other hand, much of the past is spent in a cloud of confusion as the reader learns about events before the intentions and backstory that underlies them.

      And that, maybe, was where the book tripped me up on the expectation level: while it offers you explanations of why some of the characters acted bewilderingly, many others continue to be a mystery up to and including the end. It seems almost solipsistic, each of the characters acting in a way that continues to push young Trond down his journey of self-discovery, powering on and off as if animatronics along an amusement park ride.

      But that's not to belittle the novel's strengths: a wonderful picture of what it's like to live in the wild, far enough north that snow doesn't melt until spring. There's a strange camaraderie amongst northerners when it comes to the weather, much as my Bostonian fiancee insists that city's residents are united in hating the T. And the physicality of living in the wilderness is wonderful, treated in the best of ways by the author.

      But in the end, it just didn't do it for me. Hopping through time is nice - especially when it essentially excuses the central coincidence that drives the novel, much like the same sort of structure did for Slumdog Millionaire - but in the end you have to get somewhere. Young Trond finally reaches adulthood, but older Trond simply disappears.
    • 4/5
      A chance encounter causes Trond, a widower in his sixties living in near-solitude, to reflect on the pivotal summer of 1948 that began when his friend Jon invited him along to steal horses.This quiet, contemplative book focuses on only a few characters and sort of sneaks up on you with what it's really about. The parts of the narrative present (soon before the turn of the 21st century) are told in present tense, while 1948 and other years are in past tense, which was structurally very helpful for remembering if we were with 67-year-old or 15-year-old Trond. He speaks sometimes in sentence fragments and sometimes in run-ons, much like you might imagine someone's thoughts to run on, stop and start, when he or she is alone. Trond claims he is lucky, and while we see glimpses of that, much of this story focuses on his profound sense of loss and coming to grips with grief and regret, all wrapped up in that one life-changing summer where he learned so much about his father and himself.
    • 4/5
      At the age of 67, Trond purchases a small property in the countryside near a small lake. His solitude has become a burden in Oslo — a widower from his second wife and long estranged from his first wife and daughters. Perhaps he will find peace amongst the trees as he undertakes the numerous projects of reclamation necessary for his new property and for himself. But peace is hard to come by. Instead he is troubled by memories — memories of a time in a similar environment when he was a youth and his father newly returned after the war. With a friend the same age nearby and loads of adventures for he and Jon to partake of, it might have been a perfect idyll. Instead it is an awakening of sorts — awakening into the casual brutality of accident and incident, the as yet not fully understood sexual drive, and the certainty that his knowledge of himself, his environment and especially of his father is limited if not entirely founded on lies. The memories of that eventful summer work in counterpoint with Trond’s present challenges and gradually over the course of the novel we gain a tentative understanding of this man and how he was forged through the events of fifty years prior.The writing here is lyrical as seems appropriate for memories of youth in the countryside. But this at times masks the immanent violence that permeates nature (or just human nature?). Trond is defenceless, unprepared for what will occur or what he learns and though no preparation perhaps might have helped him, he nevertheless resents his inability to decide for himself when it will hurt.Recommended.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful book about the life story of an old Norwegian Man and his youth in their family´s cabin during the second world war. The story jumps back and forth between the present and the childhood and it becomes more and more clear that some secrets are lurking in the time span in between. Per Petterson writes in a calm and unexcited style and thus manages to dip the story in a nice Norwegian mood ...
    • 5/5
      I suppose this book would be classified as a coming of age story but it is more than that; it is a wonderful evocation of life in rural Norway immediately after the Second World War. It is also a reflection on a life with all the warts exposed.Trond Sander has been a widower for 3 years and he has recently purchased a small remote cottage to live in year round. He has a dog, Lyra, but other than that his days are spent alone. Then one night he hears his neighbour calling for his dog, Poker, and he goes out to help. Lars Haug also lives alone with just his dog for company but it is more than that which draws the two men together. They first met in the summer of 1948, a summer that was a turning point for both of them.Trond and his father spent the summer in a cottage near the farm where Lars, his brothers and his mother and father lived. Trond was good friends with Jon, Lars’ oldest brother, and they often spent hours together. The title refers to a day Trond and Jon went across the river to ride horses belonging to the big landowner in the district. They don’t actually steal the horses, just a ride on them.By the end of the summer everything has changed for Trond but also for Lars and their whole families. It is Trond’s story that is the focus and it is beautifully (and also painfully) told.This book was translated by Anne Born who, as best I can tell, did a great job of the translation. It still has a flavor of the original Norwegian which is important for the total feel of the book.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      The author is a former librarian and bookseller who lives in Oslo, Norway. Awesome to know that one of his awards for this title is "One of the 10 Best Books of the Year" - New York Times Book Review. It's a very moving story. I agree with Newsweek - "...you know you're in the hands of a master storyteller."
    • 4/5
      Although I mostly enjoyed this book, I found I was left with a lot of unanswered questions at the end.
    • 3/5
      I had a hard time getting into this book. I wished I had read it in Swedish instead as I sometimes relate to the characters better in my native language.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this novel more than expected after reading Ceridwen's negative review. The British idiomatic translation didn't bother me. In fact, it seems more in keeping with the Norwegian postwar setting than American English might be. I do admit to having been taken aback when Trond's father says, "Blow me," when his 15 year old son comes into their cabin soaking wet after having been out early in the AM caught in a storm. Overall the spareness of the prose matches both the physical and emotional landscape of the novel. Since I read this novel as vacation reading over a two week period, it entered my consciousness in fragments, which perhaps did not do it justice. However, it seems fitting that I read parts of this novel set in rural Norway while staying at a resort on Washington Island in Wisconsin run by a Norwegian family since 1902.
      "Out stealing horses" refers to the early AM excursion mentioned above during which Trond & his friend Jon ride a neighbor's horses without authorization. Trond arrives home wet and dirty because his horse throws him & because a fierce storm starts up. "Out stealing horses" also refers to the code words Trond's father used when passing information across the border into Sweden for the Resistance while Norway was occupied by Germany during WWII.
      My one criticism of the novel is that I don't quite believe the ending of the story. Perhaps because the first person narration so severely limits our knowledge of the adult characters whom Trond remembers in the flashback chapters. (I found the two-time-frame, back-and-forth form clunky at times) This is particularly true of Trond's parents. The result is that Trond's father's decision to leave his family and, apparently, go off with Jon & Lars's mother (whom he worked with in the Resistance) is only partially supported by what we know of him. What we do know makes the fact that he never again contacts his first family nor support them (other than giving them the 150 kroner from cutting the timber--enough to buy Trond a new suit)a strange and not quite credible turn of events.
    • 5/5
      A superb read for someone who has been a son and now has a son himself. Or for anyone else, probably, if you like a high standard of writing without being high-flown or "abstruse". So well written that visualization of the landscape and the protagonists' place in it is so easy and enriching of the plot. One of my favourite books of all time, second only to the complete works of William Faulkner.An interview with Per Petterson on this book is due to be broadcast on the BBC World Service on June 7 2014. It may include a question from me along the lines of: "I read the book when I was 67, the same age as the narrator. Reading some of the sentences affected my breathing (in a good way) so much that I had to stop for a while. The only other time I can recall this happening is sometimes when I'm reading Faulkner. Does this ever happen to you either when you've just written a particular sentence or paragraph of your own or when you have been reading any particular writer?"
    • 3/5
      The writing is this book is beautiful. I could feel the cold when reading. And, the premise of the story -- a man attempting to escape his past but events just will not let them, is a good one. However, after a while, I just felt like I was missing something. The time sequence of the novel moves from present to past and back again and at times I had difficulty making those moves. This is definitely a study in characterization, not plot. I agree with those that praised the writing style, and agreed with those that felt it left them somehow unfulfilled.