OUT STEALING HORSES:
A finalist for the 2008 L.A. Times’ Book Prize, this complex yet wholly accessible story about youth and age, secrets and discovery, is thoroughly enjoyable. Told in the first-person voice of 67-yr.-old Trond Sander, the tale of life in Norway near the Sweden border is full of compassion and sadness, fueled by the recollections of the narrator when he was a 15-yr.-old boy in the summer of 1948. The novel jumps back and forth between the older Trond, at the brink of a new millennium, and his younger self, enamored with his unreadable father and desperate to understand his world.
The writing style is simple, lyrical almost; understated yet bursting with Hemingway-esque emotion buried under the objective narrative front. Trond is a man damaged by his past, searching for peace and solace in his new forest home, yet unable to escape the events of his youth that transformed him into a man and stripped him of his trusting nature and innocent outlook. He is a man plagued by doubts of his own worth, and simply awaiting his own, inescapable, demise.
The novel is built around a few specific “events” that illuminate young Trond’s summer of devastation, and aids the reader in unraveling the emotionless stance of the older narrator. It unfolds like a carefully constructed mystery, with clues doled out slowly yet at the perfect moments, aiding to the effect of a heightened resonance and meaning with each truth revealed. The writing is always effective, always crisp and engaging. The final passage of the novel is a bit unsatisfactory, ending with a whimper that feels like there are a few strands left unresolved, but the overall experience of the novel is one of engagement and discovery. A definite recommend.
