M Sarki

http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/86304623548/out-stealing-horses-by-per-petterson

Just a marvelous book, paced so lovely, and the telling of the tale so interesting to me. The back and forth between the past and the present accomplished so adroitly that I was simply amazed at Petterson’s talent I had previous to this book been admittedly embarrassingly unaware of.

I think what made this novel feel so important to me is the narrator’s age of sixty-seven and how after a successful career, a couple wives, two kids and on, he decides to return alone to the woods and make a home for himself and his dog to live out the rest of his days in solitude.  His long life spent as a white-collar businessman he now relies on his experience of past summers as a teenager visiting his father at a remote cabin and all the physical work and rugged life spent outdoors helping to hone his now-necessary survival skills. He is pleased at how much he remembers from that time with his father and uses the lessons well as he gets on quite well out there despite his advancing age. But solitude additionally affords him much time to also contemplate his past, and then an old acquaintance from those long ago summers surprisingly ends up being his next door neighbor which adds to the tension as the narrator Trond relates to the reader his vividly poignant memories. 

There is mystery present throughout the entire novel and this is something other reviewers found objectionable. I believe the vague and out-of-reach characters of his memory add to the contemplative nature of what Trond is attempting to do in his old age. Every person in the book whether it be his summer friend Jon who was responsible for the rifle accident that took his younger brother’s life, Lar’s the surviving twin who actually shot his brother dead as a little boy while they were both left unattended, Trond’s father who was having an affair with the grieving mother, the mother herself, and even Trond's own mother, all of them a clouded image as in memory and none of them clear to us or to Trond from which to figure anything out. The awful world war that Trond’s father was a part of and he who played such a brave and significant role in the Norwegian resistance to the Nazis was also a backdrop for how his father met this mother of the boys in the first place while working together secretly as couriers against the Nazi occupiers of their country. I think the dreamlike image of all these character helped to provide the out-of-focus consideration of the narrator's past and what it meant to him now that he was distanced from the city's humanity while establishing a warm and comfortable life by his own hand while surviving in a harsh but natural environment.  I cannot praise Petterson's method more highly and how he significantly reached me by his words. The translator also must have done a very good job as I was completely engaged with the book from beginning to end.  

Another complaint I have read regarding this novel was there ultimately was no answer given to any question of a memory presented by the narrator, and there rarely is anyway. Generally, acceptance is as much as we can hope for, and that is not by my lights an unacceptable conclusion at all.  I was so comfortable not being in the presence of contrived or trite actions, and even the accidental death by leaving a loaded gun in the vicinity of unattended children actually happens all of the time. And nothing was made much of anything, though it typically is, and I found that to be a refreshing method used by Petterson as well.  
  
There is good and bad in everything and Per Petterson skillfully makes use of this fact throughout the entire book. I found the novel not only a page turner, but also a rich and rewarding experience I hope to savor for quite some time. Though this was my first introduction to any work by Per Petterson, I am positive there will be more to come in the very near future.