West Saint Paul Antiques

This month for AAUW book club we read, a recent novels by the contemporary Norwegian writer Per Petterson. “Out Stealing Horses,” Petterson’s breakthrough novel from 2003, became an international bestseller. His follow-up, “I Curse the River of Time,” has just been released in the U.S. and is receiving a more muted reception. Wonderfully translated by Anne Born, “Out Stealing Horses” is an astonishing work, one that generously rewards the open-hearted reader. Petterson himself has an easy command of English (as is apparent from this video of his acceptance speech delivered at the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award ceremony) and he worked cooperatively with his translator. The result, he proudly says, is this: “Sometimes I think the English version is better than the Norwegian.”

If you’re the type of reader who keeps a pencil nearby to mark passages that “wow” you, if you’re in the habit of drawing stars and exclamation points next to paragraphs that “pierce to the root” of truth, then be prepared to scratch lead onto many a page margin. My copy of “Out Stealing Horses” is now a personal artifact — the sort of heavily marked-up book that, were I to come across something like it at a yard sale, I’d quickly toss aside as wholly unreadable, since who wants some third party interrupting your communion with the author? (OK, maybe if the annotations are the handiwork of a friend of the author, or the bon mots of a later, famous devotee — creating what rare book dealers call an association copy — then I’d consider a purchase, like the critic who confesses to a covetous urge, here.)

It seems to me every great author — and Per Petterson surely is one — possesses in his mind and nurtures in his heart a distinctive worldview. To say this is, admittedly, to accept notions of imagination, intuition and emotion associated with the Romantic era. So be it. I see romanticism not as a stalled literary movement that flourished and foundered in the nineteenth century, but as an artistic spirit essentially continuous with the present. In large measure Per Petterson belongs to this ongoing tradition. Petterson’s worldview is unlocked and offered to readers most convincingly in “Out Stealing Horses”. Consider the heroic isolation of the book’s 67-year-old narrator, Trond Sander, who has retired to a remote riverside cabin; think of his desire for communion with untamed nature; note how nature’s agnostic beauties and onslaughts humble and mold the novel’s characters — all of these facets, each of them close to Petterson’s heart, are Romantic themes.

The reader should be prepared to find the emotion in “Out Stealing Horses” to be of the most subtle kind — mostly unstated, internalized, “suppressed.” Call it Nordic Stoicism. Trond’s father tells him: “You decide for yourself when it will hurt.” The prospective reader should also understand that the book’s principal characters (Trond’s family and neighbors near the family’s summer cabin on the Norway-Sweden border in 1948) are not about to launch into the “talking therapy” as a way to reconcile themselves with their own failures or the universe’s cruelty. Any reader harboring a dislike of characters locked into a Yankee reserve (to compare an American “type” to the book’s Norwegians), or anyone annoyed by Cormac McCarthy’s characters’ Western-based muteness, or anyone bothered by taciturnity in general, should just stay away. So too should readers who prefer flowing plots. Peterson forms this novel not from a smooth story arc but from punctuated incidents of revelation.

But oh what incidents grace the pages of “Out Stealing Horses” — and oh what simple but evocative prose. Time after time, nonverbal communication — gaze and sign, gesture and touch — ushers in direct-to-the-heart epiphanies. Episodes of gorgeous nature-writing transport you. Set pieces describing communal activities in rural Norway six decades ago (harvesting hay and forming hayracks without benefit of machinery; felling trees with hand saws and launching logs on their journey downriver; the morning rounds of a milkmaid) yield a nostalgic glow. So too does the young Trond’s fondness for Zorro, Davy Crockett, and Lassie. The adult Trond’s dog, Lyra, whose character shines through as elementally as any other creature, provides quiet comic relief. Then you shudder as a father who means everything to his son (“we had a pact”) betrays that pact. And always there are bitter truths to bear. Trond’s father tells him: “That’s life, that’s what you learn from, when things happen. You just have to take it in and remember to think afterwards and not forget and never grow bitter. Do you understand?”

This is a book that provides each new reader new reasons to praise it.

I could see the grey edge of the forest outside the window and the grey sky above, and my father said "Good night, Trond, see you tomorrow," and I too said "Good night and see you tomorrow."

Out Stealing Horses is timeless, good, filled with wonder; too good, by far, to be put down easily --- or easily forgotten.

In the meantime, I am spending my days getting this place in order.  There is quite a lot that needs doing.  I did not pay much for it.  In fact, I had been prepared to shell out a lot more to lay my hands on the house and the grounds, but there was not much competition.  I do understand why now, but it doesn’t matter.  I am pleased anyway.  I try to do most of the work myself, even though I could have paid a carpenter, I am far from skint, but then it would have gone too fast.  I want to use the time it takes.  Time is important to me now, I tell myself.  Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but be only time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.

Trond is a 67 year old Norwegian man who has recently lost his wife and his sister, and has decided to live in a remote cabin, so that he can get his head around the events of his life, of his father’s life, to try to understand why, following World War II, his father leaves and never comes back.

Immediately following the war, Trond and his father go out into the country for a summer, to do some logging and make some quick money that way. Early on in the book, a tragedy occurs that we think will shape the book, will shape Trond and inform the narrative. But while it is certainly an important event in Trond’s life, it is not central to the story. Rather, the story is about his father’s involvement in the Norwegian resistance, an involvement that his family knew nothing about. Time shifts from the mid 1940s to the late 1990s, and we learn about the summer that Trond and his father spend, and the effect that it has made on the man that he becomes.

The book is sparse but rich. There were no words wasted, but nothing left out. This is my first book by a Norwegian author, I believe, and I wonder how much of the feel of the book is that Scandinavian flavor to life, and how much is simply the voice of the author, Per Petterson. I thought this book wonderful, and I’m so glad that I read it. I found it on the ‘recommended’ table at Green Apple Books, as it was highly recommended by the staff. I felt somewhat savvy and cool buying it, as though people in the suburbs do not have access to such worldly literature. Imagine my horror when I found it on the table of our closest Borders Books.

Oh well. Out Stealing Horses was declared one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, so I guess it couldn’t be considered a secret, could it. On closer thought, I’m glad it made it out to Borders. I’m glad that more people will have the opportunity to find this wonderful book, to perhaps meander through its story and fall in love with the language and pacing, and be surprised by the exquisite combination of a feeling of not much going on, juxtaposed with some very real and dramatic events.

Highly recommended. I read Out Stealing Horses for the TBR challenge.