I bought Out Stealing Horses based on the cover (horses galloping over a plain) and the title, assuming it was a Western. Wrong on all counts! It is a quiet book that blends the present with several aspects of the protagonist’s past—and is set in eastern Norway near the border with Sweden in the years after World War II. But it is an astoundingly beautiful coming-of-age story, dealing with both the teen years and the late years of life.
The book begins towards the end of Trond Sandler’s life. His wife and sister have died and he feels compelled to abandon his current lifestyle to live an isolated life near the forest, an environment he’s longed for since experiencing it as a fifteen-year-old boy. So, he sells most of his possessions and moves himself and his dog to a remote cabin, not even letting his adult daughters know his location. He requires less and less to subsist, “I’m surprised at how unfilled my shopping baskets have become, how few things I need now I am alone.” But, to keep entropy at bay, he has rules to remain civilized: tablecloth, napkins, real meals, etc.
A visit from his neighbor, Lars, forces Trond to reexplore the year he and his father spent the summer at a small cabin on the edge of the forest just after World War II. His father worked with the Norwegian resistance during the war and used the cabin as his base. Trond learns from a friend, Franz—not the father—about the father’s activities. Over this summer, Trond’s friend, Jon is the cause of a family tragedy, and this event helps shape Trond’s life.
I can’t say enough about the deft attention Petterson gives to sight, sound, scent, and the descriptions of Trond’s deepening affection for the forest—and his father. As Trond works through his past, he learns that “If I just concentrate, I can walk into memory’s store and find the right shelf with the right film and disappear into it and still feel in my body that ride through the forest with my father; high above the river along the ridge and the down on the other side, across the border into Sweden and far into was was a foreign country, at least for me.”
This is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read recently. A mighty thumbs up.
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Out Stealing Horses (Graywolf Press, July 3, 2012) is available through:
Your local independent bookseller | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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