Out Stealing Horses

April 9, 2007
Award-winning Norwegian novelist Petterson renders the meditations of Trond Sander, a man nearing 70, dwelling in self-imposed exile at the eastern edge of Norway in a primitive cabin. Trond's peaceful existence is interrupted by a meeting with his only neighbor, who seems familiar. The meeting pries loose a memory from a summer day in 1948 when Trond's friend Jon suggests they go out and steal horses. That distant summer is transformative for Trond as he reflects on the fragility of life while discovering secrets about his father's wartime activities. The past also looms in the present: Trond realizes that his neighbor, Lars, is Jon's younger brother, who "pulls aside the fifty years with a lightness that seems almost indecent." Trond becomes immersed in his memory, recalling that summer that shaped the course of his life while, in the present, Trond and Lars prepare for the winter, allowing Petterson to dabble in parallels both bold and subtle. Petterson coaxes out of Trond's reticent, deliberate narration a story as vast as the Norwegian tundra.

Starred review from May 15, 2007
Sixty-seven-year-old Trond Sander lives alone with his dog in a remote cabin in easternmost Norway. He hopes this isolation will help him take life one step at a time after the deaths of both his sister and his wife three years ago. This peaceful solitude is broken by the appearance of his only neighbor out looking for his dog. Meeting Lars, a boyhood friend Trond hasn't seen in 50 years, brings forth a multitude of memories. In flashback, the story centers on the summer of 1948, three years after the German occupiers left. The defining moment in those memories was when Lars, at age ten, accidentally shot his twin brother with a hunting gun. Now Trond's daily routines mask other unresolved tensions from his boyhood: his passionate feelings for Lars's mother, his father's role in the resistance in 1944 and later abandonment of the family, and his own estrangement from his daughters. Petterson (In the Wake ) has established his reputation abroad, winning several international prizes including the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, but he deserves critical acclaim here as well. Highly recommended for all fiction collections.Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2007
Three years after his wifes accidental death, Trond Sander, 67, settles into an isolated cabin near Norways southeastern border with Sweden. Its where he last saw his father at the end of summer 1948. Then 15 and full grown, Trond helped harvest the timbertoo early, perhaps, but necessarily, it came to seem later. He also suddenly lost his local best friend, Jon, when, after an early morning spent stealing horsesthat is, taking an equine joyrideJon inadvertently allowed a gun accident that killed one of his 10-year-old twin brothers and guiltily ran away to sea. When that summer was over, Trond went back to Oslo, but his father stayed with Jons mother, his lover since they met in the Resistance during World War II. Segueing with aplomb between his present and past, Tronds own narration is literarily distinguished, arguably to a fault; would a businessman, even one who loves Dickens, write this well? The novels incidents and lush but precise descriptions of forest and river, rain and snow, sunlight and night skies are on a par with those of Cather, Steinbeck, Berry, and Hemingway, and its emotional force and flavor are equivalent to what those authors can deliver, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)