Out Stealing Horses

This gorgeous novel, gracefully translated by Anne Born and beautifully performed by Richard Poe, is told from the point of view of Trond Sonder, who in early old age has moved with his dog to an isolated corner of Norway to live in solitude. But his solitude is like a movie screen on which plays the last year of his boyhood, shortly after the war, when he spent the summer with his father in a village near the Swedish border. What Trond learned about his father's wartime activities and what happened that postwar summer changed everything in his life. Poe's warm, attractive voice is equally effective for Trond young and old. He gives one of those performances that disappear, leaving nothing to jar the listener from absorption in the story. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

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.