Per Petterson; trans. Anne Born
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born, unfolds in the first-person point of view of Trond Sander, a sixty-seven-year-old man who has retired to a small, isolated village in Norway. He wants only to be left alone with his dog and to surround himself with nature as he struggles to find the time and space he needs to reflect. He is painfully self-conscious, sensitive, and honest. He wants to fit in with his rural surroundings and fend for himself as if to prove he can make it alone.
Trond describes in meticulous detail his daily activities and chores as he prepares his small home for winter. As he does so, he reflects on his life, focusing on a summer when he was fifteen years old and staying with his father in a cabin in Norway. It was during that summer his best friend, Jon, carelessly left his loaded hunting rifle at his home. His younger brother picked up the rifle and fired at his twin, accidentally killing him. The incident traumatized Jon who disappeared from Trond’s life. It also impacted Trond. The memory resurfaces when Trond discovers that his closest neighbor in this isolated village is none other than Lars, Jon’s brother who accidentally shot his twin.
The novel alternates between Trond’s activities in the present and flashbacks of that summer. The threads intermingle with a scene or activity in the present conjuring up a memory from the past. Trond talks to himself as if he trying to come to terms with the events of that summer, when he learned his father, Jon’s mother, and a family friend were part of the resistance during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Norway. His father was a courier for the resistance, smuggling documents and people across the border to Sweden. It was also during that summer he bonded with his father, a bond that is shattered when his father sends a flippant letter to his wife and children, announcing his disappearance from their lives.
Trond’s melancholy saturates his reflections and activities. He feels deeply, but as a character, he remains elusive since we are never permitted to penetrate his shell. His focus on performing daily, labor-intensive chores provide satisfaction and a sense of achievement. But they are also a tactic to delay him in dealing with the pain he feels at the death of Jon’s brother, his father’s disappearance from his life, and the deaths of his sister and wife. Wherever he goes, he is reminded of the events of that summer. His understanding of the past has changed now that he reflects on it with the eyesight and maturity of old age. But there are aspects of it that continue to elude him.
The tone is elegiac; the sentences long and rhythmic, connected by a series of ‘ands’ that accumulate detail. An overriding sense of loss permeates this story of an old man reflecting on his life and the difficult memories that surface. His temporal shifts serve as a reminder that the past is never really past. We carry it with us always. It impacts our self-image, our lives, and our relationships with others. And, as in the case of Trond, it can continue to haunt us many decades later.
A quiet, poignant, and compelling meditation on aging and loss.
Highly recommended.