We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and oneof the first days of July.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 … 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.
Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area 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.
more
This is the story of a man named Trond Sanders. It is the year 1999 and he is 67 years old and has bought a cabin in Norway that he is going to fix up and spend the rest of his life in. He has moved in late in the season, and is worried about getting the cabin ready before Norway winter really sets in. As he gets things ready, he runs into a man that was part of his distance past, and it brings up a lot of memories of the last time he was at this lake.
The book travels back and forth between 1998 and 1948 when Trond was 15 years old and at this very lake for the summer. It is just he and his dad. His dad was there thinking he could make some money doing logging. Trond meets a young boy his age named Jon who talks Trond into “Stealing” horses from neighboring farms. The boys don’t actually steal them, just ride them and return them, but the idea is thrilling to the young boys.
A tragedy during that summer leaves two families torn apart, for very different reasons. Trond learns things about his father he wished he never knew. Jon has to live with what he has done.
The book delves into relationships of fathers and son, best friends of youth, and how things can come full circle. There are some things from your past you cannot escape no matter how hard you try.
The last line in the book was the best of all: “We decide for ourselves when it will hurt”.
It was an excellent novel. It is beautifully written and I could picture the harsh Norway countryside as I read. The story takes so many twists and turns, all revolving around the pain we feel for things that happen in our past and how we chose to deal with them and face them in the future. I encourage you to read this short novel for yourself. You will not be disappointed.
Stark. The setting. The external landscape of the protagonist. The prose. I liked it. I didn’t love it.
The title of Per Petterson’s masterful novel is a double-entendre: “out stealing horses” is equally a teenaged prank and a codeword for resistance activity during World War II, and both are folded into this luminous and layered work.
Trond Sandler is 67 and has moved from Oslo to a remote cabin where he launches himself into DIY chores and tries to fit in, distressed because he feels completely alone with no one to plow him out should he become snowbound. Norwegian and other Scandinavian authors distinguish between loneliness and solitude, and indeed Trond has always longed to be alone… and as it turns out, he is far from lonely, as a disturbing past presses down on him and memories take over his consciousness.
And they are difficult memories. He remembers the Wehrmacht troops marching into Oslo, the screaming of Messerschmitts roaring over the fjords and into the city. His father disappeared altogether, becoming part of a rat-line that transported documents and people out of occupied Norway. But not all of Tron’s memories are of bravery and self-sacrifice, as violence plays out in ways both sweeping and small. His mother’s uncles are twins, one of which was killed by the Gestapo, the other of which was not… but returns to lay claim to Tron’s home and peace.
The writing in Out Stealing Horses is spare and powerful and leaves spaces between thoughts, between memories, that somehow echo the spaces of the frigid north in which Trond lives.
“I whistle for Lyra, who comes running at once from some serious digging work behind the house, and with the Thermos under my arm I walk over to the edge of the forest where the dead spruce lies long and heavy and almost white in the heather with no trace of the bark that once covered the whole trunk.”
The story—or, rather, stories—is anything but spare. Petterson weaves in and out of history, the present, and the future, all through the disturbing voice of Trond, who has found anything but escape in his isolated cabin. And when intruders arrive, he is ill-equipped to deal with the pressures and danger they represent. Yet in the end he is able to wrest a peace of sorts—with his life, with the lives of those around him, and with whatever may yet lie ahead.
This is a small brilliant book that will make you smile—and think.
Very much not the sort of book I’m typically drawn into reading. I will admit that some of its content was lost on me, I suspect because I am a woman. I view things from a female’s perspective, so the reflections of a man in his 60s, contemplating his boy-turning-manhood and the summer that colored the rest of his life, was unfamiliar territory for me. What he feels is kept veiled, speaking more through actions than words, as he tries to work out these emotions with which he is confronted. You have to read between the lines, at least I did, and try to step outside the box of how I think and feel. I wouldn’t say I found this a gripping page-turner, but more an exercise in being thoughtful and interacting, perceiving, in a way that is foreign to me. In light of that, I might have awarded three stars for content, but then considered that unfair, since it may be simply my inability to feel what Trond feels that tempered my initial reaction. There are some lessons in the pages of this book. My favorite is this:
“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 fill in with their own feelings and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No one can touch you unless you yourself want them to. You only have to be polite and smile and keep paranoid thoughts at bay, because they will talk about you no matter how much you squirm, it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself.”
A thoughtful, original, coming of age story with impact.