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Out Stealing Horses |  | Author: Per Pettersen
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  78 reviews
Sales Rank: 2102
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 250
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 839.82374
ASIN: B001ESCQ2W
Publication Date: August 23, 2008
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Trond's friend Jon often appeared at his doorstep with an adventure in mind for the two of them. But this morning was different. What began as a joy ride on "borrowed" horses ends with Jon falling into a strange trance of grief. Trond soon learns what befell Jon earlier that day - an incident that marks the beginning of a series of vital losses for both boys. At age sixty-seven, Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated part of eastern Norway to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 78
 Memory and Essence July 29, 2007
Libra (Tustin, CA USA)
83 out of 87 found this review helpful
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!
Lyrical memories of war and betrayal May 29, 2007
Nimbolina (USA)
108 out of 119 found this review helpful
This is one of the best novels to come out of Scandinavia in recent years. Written from the point of view of a 70-year old man reflecting on the time he spent with his father near the Swedish border during the Second World War, the narrative present of the novel alternates back and forth between his current solitude and his adolescent confusion over his father's wartime activities. The novel is enormously sad and haunting, and the language beautifully simple and evocative.
Excellent book July 30, 2007
Mark Mussari (Old Pueblo)
142 out of 159 found this review helpful
Petterson has crafted a finely written and imagery-laden book in which the relationship between setting and personality is truly symbiotic. I found the book engrossing without the slightest hint of emotional sensationalism or intellectual posturing. Instead the narrator (Trond) comes across as painfully real, and the use of flashbacks and back story are integral to the entire narrative, not a simple plot device. Trond is a memorable, relatable character who in his youth experiences changes that cast a long shadow far into his adulthood. The writing maintains an excellence throughout rarely encountered in contemporary lit, and Petterson discloses a fine ear for dialogue and a strong yet subtle sense of narrative movement. One of the best novels out of Scandinavia in years.
Unique and Haunting September 18, 2007
J. Dunn (NYC,)
34 out of 35 found this review helpful
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.
A Magnificent Gem of a Novel March 9, 2008
B. Case (Redondo Beach, CA)
30 out of 31 found this review helpful
"Out Stealing Horses," by Per Petterson, is a magnificent gem of a novel. It's a contemplative book that slowly builds momentum for the compelling mystery of human suffering at its core. The story is constructed around a bare sliver of a plot, but there is enormous emotional impact in the telling. The prose is deceptively simple, but so vivid with nuanced detail that the reader immediately becomes caught up and lost in the telling.
The book takes place in 1999 with frequent flashbacks to 1948. The story concerns Trond Sander, a 67-year-old man coming to terms with his aging body and still grieving three years after the deaths of his wife and sister. Telling no one, not even his two grown daughters, Trond takes his pension and moves to an isolated lakeside cabin in the wilds of northern Norway. There he plans to live out the rest of his life in quiet solitude. He spends his days repairing his ideally situated but ramshackle cabin, taking walks with his beloved dog, absorbing the beauty of nature that fill his senses with pleasure at every turn, and dealing with the mundane necessities of everyday life. He has an acute desire to be alone, and is, in every way, perfectly content with this isolation.
Circumstances bring Trond together with one of his neighbors, Lars Haug, another solitary man. It doesn't take both men very long to realize that they share a mysterious common heritage of heartache some fifty years earlier when Trond was 15 and Lars was a 10-year-old neighbor boy, the little brother of his close friend Jon. Long dormant memories are awakened, old wounds opened; yet both men avoid discussing their common history of emotional pain.
It is this mystery of what really happened between their two families in the summer of 1948 that holds the book together. Slowly, over the course of the novel, bits and pieces of their shared history become known. Petterson artfully chooses to reveal mere tidbits of facts, barely hinting at any deeper emotional impact, always leaving questions unanswered. The author leaves it up to the reader to put the pieces together, and add meaning to the whole. In order to do this, readers must use their own experience to help them supply feelings, opinions and assumptions about each character's motivations. This technique is certainly the genius behind this novel: it makes the reader an active participant in the figuring out all the "what," "how," and "why" of events. Among any group of readers discussing this book, there will be significant differences in how the events are interpreted and found meaningful. That is why this book has such a profound emotional impact: readers must take it into their hearts and make it meaningful in terms of their own life experiences.
There is a lovely passage early in the book when Trond is thinking about his quiet, arms-length assimilation into the village community near his cabin. This passage is noteworthy because it reveals not only a great deal about the main character's personality and mature understanding of life, but also lets readers in on how the author plans to reveal Trond's story over the course of the novel. In this passage, Trond thinks about his basic interactions with village people and reasons:
"People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook" (page 73).
So, don't be surprised at the end of this book when you find the author doesn't put himself on a hook and reveal every crucial detail about how the events actually play out. Enjoy finding your own meaning, and trusting your own interpretation. If you do, you'll join legions of readers around the world who hold this book close to their hearts.
This book gets my unqualified highest recommendation.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 78
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