Out Stealing Horses
Ratings16
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings16
Average rating3.9
A bestseller and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, now in paperback from Graywolf Press for the first time 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. 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, Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is a compelling retrospective book that isn't as ambitious as it could be, by which I mean that the two characters Trond and Lars do not speak of that which the reader eventually learns. It is an unspoken conflict and you could make the argument that they should confront one another, to bring that conflict to the foreground. For me, their NOT speaking of it makes them far more interesting characters, even if the tension is not as electric as it could be.
Trond Sander has removed himself to an isolated cabin to live out the remainder of his lonely life when he comes across a man in the dark and he suddenly remembers all the events of one memorable summer.
