Out Stealing Horses

Continuing the New York Times Book Review top ten of 2007 is Out Stealing Horses, a novel by Norwegian writer Per Petterson, translated by Ann Born.

Trond Sander is sixty-seven years old. It is on the cusp of the turnover of the new millennium. His wife and sister have both died recently, so he decides to retreat into a solitary existence, fixing up a rustic cabin near the Swedish border. His only constant companion is a dog he got at an animal shelter. He has no TV or telephone, but since he is not exactly a skilled woodsman he worries about whether he will get snowed in or whether he was enough oil for his chainsaw, as he will be using a stove for heat. He seems content enough, though.

Then he meets a man who takes him back to the summer of his boyhood, when he was fifteen and living for a time with his father. They were felling timber. But a tragedy involving his best friend sours the period, and it turns out that it will be the last time he will ever spend with his father, and he's not quite sure why.

The novel moves fluidly back and forth between the Trond's boyhood memories and his current situation. At times it is very dreamlike, and if I went a few days without reading it it took me a while to figure out where I was in the story. At one point another narrative arrived, as his father's friend tells him a story of how his father was involved in the resistance against the Nazis (and gives a double meaning to the title, which is both a childhood prank and a code phrase used by resistance fighters).

The writing is exquisitely detailed, like the model of a ship inside a bottle, but after the description of the tragedy, which occurs in the early chapters, I found the story drifting to an unsure conclusion. Much is made of the character being near the border of Sweden, which I'm sure means more to a Norwegian that it does to an American, who would have trouble telling the citizens of those country apart easily. I did like the atmospheric effort Petterson creates in writing about Trond's isolation in his cabin, and there is a nice scene involving a visit from his daughter.

This book would be a nice companion before a roaring fire in the dead of winter, on the understanding that it is meditative and has little action. I did appreciate the chance to visit a land I know little about.