≡ PDF Free Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson Anne Born 9781555974701 Books

Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson Anne Born 9781555974701 Books

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Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson Anne Born 9781555974701 Books

In a scene early in Per Petterson's novel, an adolescent boy named Trond Sander is mowing hay with a scythe in the company of his father. Trond comes to a patch of nettles and is afraid to cut them even with the scythe. His father then pulls the nettles up with his bare hands. He instructs Trond with the words that are the title of this review. It is a lesson that Trond ultimately learns for himself during the course of this book.

"Out Stealing Horses" is set in rural and remote east Norway. The book is told in the first person by Trond who in 1999 at age 67 has moved to a primitive cabin in the woods to find peace, solitude, and an opportunity for reflection. The time frame moves back and forth between Trond's chosen life in the cabin and the events of his adolescence in the late 1940s. The earlier period of the narrative centers on Trond's relationship with his father, a relationship which involves both love and deep dissapointment.

The book moves slowly, deliberately, and with understatement. Much of the story is told through indirection. Trond offers important hints of the course of his life between his adolescence and his retirment to solititude, but much is left unsaid. In his stay in the woods, Trond meets a neighbor named Lars who also pursues a quiet, solitary life. Lars was the brother of Trond's childhood friend, Jon, and the stories of the two men are intertwined as Trond recollects and tells his story.

The book includes descriptive passages of the rivers, lakes and woods of Norway and Sweden and of the harshness of the winters and of the difficult work of rural life. The book includes several intricate subplots, including accounts of Trond's father's work in the resistance movement during WW II, and a story of the hazards of harvesting timber and floating it downstream. The stories build slowly and are interwoven skillfully. Petterson develops the parallels between Trond's adolescence and his life as an elderly man.

Trond spends his evenings in his cabin with his dog Lyra and with rereading Charles Dickens. The novels "David Copperfield" and "A Tale of Two Cities" get considerable attention in this book as Trond relates them to the story he himself has to tell. The reader is given a glimpse of Trond's apparently successful career, of his failed first marriage and of his awkward relationship with his two daughters when his elder daughter Ellen pays him a surprise visit. Trond also offers a revealing scene of one of his relationships between his first and second marriages. A woman whose name Trond cannot remember was knitting him a scarf and mittens. Trond remembers only the click of this former lover's knitting needles as her ways were quiet and calm. "It was all too low key for me" he observes "and the relationship dwindled into nothing."

This novel takes some patience to read. The form of the book, in terms of a first person narrator interweaving stories of present and past has been overrused in recent novels, but Petterson uses it effectively here. This book encourages reflection upon love, human contact, and pain, and upon their relationship to the nature of independence and self-reliance.

Robin Friedman


Tags : Out Stealing Horses [Per Petterson, Anne Born] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <B><I>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.</I></B> <B><I></I></B> <B><I></B></I>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 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,Per Petterson, Anne Born,Out Stealing Horses,Graywolf Press,1555974708,031001 Graywolf HC,FICTION Literary,Fiction,Fiction - General,Literary

Out Stealing Horses Per Petterson Anne Born 9781555974701 Books Reviews

A book I have thought about quite a bit after reading . I was a bit confused and unsettled when I finished . The writing was beautiful . I picked it up to read again and all my confusion fell away . Now many sentences had meaning far more than the first read through . The second read was even more exhilarating . A complex , beautiful written story about coming of age , young and old.
So concludes Per Petterson in his award-winning novel of remembrance of those decisive youthful events that changed the course of one's life, as well as those of others. My first reading of Petterson was his novel, It's Fine by Me, which came compliments of the Vine Program. This is the second novel (and won't be the last) of his that I've read, and I consider it by far the better of the two, since it resonated more strongly on numerous issues.

The novel commences with Trond Sanders, who considers himself a "spry" 67, deciding to seek the tranquility of a cabin in the woods, along the eastern border of Norway, near the sea, to live out his days. Many a reader might envision a "Walden"-style retreat. The timing is as the millennium turns. A chance encounter with his most immediate neighbor, who still lives a considerable distance away, proves fateful. It is a person that he has not seen for over half a century. An event so improbable, that it would normally diminish the quality of the novel, as the author says. His neighbor is Lars Hung.

The novel moves back and forth over time, from the present (1999) to 1948, when Trond is 15, and Lars is 10. It is only three years after the German occupation of Norway during WW II. Events during the occupation still reverberate. It is about friendships and familial relationships. One relationship is between Trond, in his coming-of-age mode, and his father, whom he realizes he does not know, and as events unfold, never will (that secret world of adults!). Trond, and a neighbor friend of the same age, Jon, far before the age of electronic diversions, seek amusement and thrills by riding their neighbor's horse; hence the title to the novel... which we also learn later is used in an entirely different context.

A loaded gun, left unattended for just a few minutes, leads to the ultimate in tragedy that tears apart two different families. But one learns that the "fault lines" were there before this event...and they stem from the respective positions and actions of the family members during WW II, who resisted, who collaborated, and who just tried to ignore it all. I love Petterson's story telling technique providing one data point as he is describing the natural world, and then many pages later adding or reinforcing another, and the reader must draw the long line between. For example, the reader learns that Trond and his father might be interested in the same woman, one approximately the father's age. Only glances and a bit of tension are indicated. Then many pages later, Petterson is more explicit, and has the father tell the son to go find someone his own age.

The relationships examined are far more than fathers and sons. There are spousal ones, ones with the neighbor's spouses, the best friends of youth, and as life comes full circle, there is the meeting with Trond's estranged daughter, at his Walden-like retreat. And it is all done in this Scandinavian-minimalist style, lean and functional. Petterson also throws in enough "creaks" in Trond's physical functioning to resonate with those of a certain age... yes, we have to decide ourselves when we will admit that it hurts. And it all plays out against the beauty of the Norwegian natural world, which is screaming out for a re-visit. A wonderful, thoughtful, 6-star read.
In a scene early in Per Petterson's novel, an adolescent boy named Trond Sander is mowing hay with a scythe in the company of his father. Trond comes to a patch of nettles and is afraid to cut them even with the scythe. His father then pulls the nettles up with his bare hands. He instructs Trond with the words that are the title of this review. It is a lesson that Trond ultimately learns for himself during the course of this book.

"Out Stealing Horses" is set in rural and remote east Norway. The book is told in the first person by Trond who in 1999 at age 67 has moved to a primitive cabin in the woods to find peace, solitude, and an opportunity for reflection. The time frame moves back and forth between Trond's chosen life in the cabin and the events of his adolescence in the late 1940s. The earlier period of the narrative centers on Trond's relationship with his father, a relationship which involves both love and deep dissapointment.

The book moves slowly, deliberately, and with understatement. Much of the story is told through indirection. Trond offers important hints of the course of his life between his adolescence and his retirment to solititude, but much is left unsaid. In his stay in the woods, Trond meets a neighbor named Lars who also pursues a quiet, solitary life. Lars was the brother of Trond's childhood friend, Jon, and the stories of the two men are intertwined as Trond recollects and tells his story.

The book includes descriptive passages of the rivers, lakes and woods of Norway and Sweden and of the harshness of the winters and of the difficult work of rural life. The book includes several intricate subplots, including accounts of Trond's father's work in the resistance movement during WW II, and a story of the hazards of harvesting timber and floating it downstream. The stories build slowly and are interwoven skillfully. Petterson develops the parallels between Trond's adolescence and his life as an elderly man.

Trond spends his evenings in his cabin with his dog Lyra and with rereading Charles Dickens. The novels "David Copperfield" and "A Tale of Two Cities" get considerable attention in this book as Trond relates them to the story he himself has to tell. The reader is given a glimpse of Trond's apparently successful career, of his failed first marriage and of his awkward relationship with his two daughters when his elder daughter Ellen pays him a surprise visit. Trond also offers a revealing scene of one of his relationships between his first and second marriages. A woman whose name Trond cannot remember was knitting him a scarf and mittens. Trond remembers only the click of this former lover's knitting needles as her ways were quiet and calm. "It was all too low key for me" he observes "and the relationship dwindled into nothing."

This novel takes some patience to read. The form of the book, in terms of a first person narrator interweaving stories of present and past has been overrused in recent novels, but Petterson uses it effectively here. This book encourages reflection upon love, human contact, and pain, and upon their relationship to the nature of independence and self-reliance.

Robin Friedman