The stark prose of Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses matches its stark but vividly described Norwegian landscape. As with most translations, however, it has occasional phrasing and vocabulary that seem odd. The 67-year-old narrator, Trond, has moved to a remote cabin without indoor plumbing after losing his wife in a car accident that he survived. He describes himself as having "golden trousers" because he has always been lucky. (See what I mean about the translation?) However, I wouldn't consider him to have been that lucky. Not only did he lose his wife, but he was fifteen when he last saw his father. The tragic events and revelations of the last summer that he spent with his father are brought back to the surface when he reconnects with Lars, who lived near Trond's father. The way that the story is told, mostly in flashback, in a very wistful but not self-pitying manner, is just as important here as the characters and plot. It seems more haunting than sad; the book is never dreary. Also, this book is reminiscent of Leeway Cottage (see my July 2008 post) in which Jews were smuggled into Sweden from Denmark. Again, there's a history lesson here that Sweden served as a refuge for Jews from all over Scandinavia during WWII. Trond ends his story without asking the questions that I as a reader wanted to have answered, but perhaps that's partly the point—that we really don't need to know everything.
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