Out Stealing Horses

I was about to embark on a three-hour train ride when I picked up Per Peterson's "Out Stealing Horses" in the bookstore at the station. Set in Norway, the book traces the life of Trond Sander just after he moves into a remote riverside cabin, alone, at sixty seven years of age - only to have "all the turbulence, grief, and overwhelming beauty of his youth come back to him". Norway is a far off land ...I have been only as far as Denmark, so I was curious enough, then saw a claim that the book was "...a gripping account of such originality as to expand the reader's own experience of life". Who could resist a claim like that? And from the New York Times Review of Books, at that?

"Out Stealing Horses" is a trip into nature and story, interwoven; into the life of a man who has loved and grieved, who still has an achingly intense longing for his father and for understanding pieces of his own story, the mystery of his father and his past. When Trond was young, during the time of the second World War, when Norway was occupied by the Nazis, his father would disappear for months at a time. Yet Trond enjoyed a deep and trusting connection with him that was based on the depth and truth of moments lived together - beautiful moments, captured with the eye and heart. The intrusion of the bigger picture into the personal life and relationships is only understood many years later when Trond has a chance to talk with friend of his father's. I felt as hungry as Trond to know more about what was going on in his father's life, the village, and the country.

By chance, I picked up the October 20 issue of the New Yorker which also has a review of a book by Per Peterson: his newer novel "To Siberia". This reviewer also mentioned the "astonishing" earlier novel "Out Stealing Horses". He picked up perfectly what Peterson is about: "Peterson's real interest, though, is in the physical and emotional distances that separate his characters from each other and from their former selves". That may be true - but to me, the separation is always conveyed through longing for connection and understanding, and it is endured with meticulous attention to past and present - and with trust, always.

Every time I pick up this book I want to read it again. Maybe I will.

Here is the NY Times review

The first chapter is available, too.