This wonderfully strange novel is Petterson’s sixth, but only the third to have been translated from their original Norwegian into English. And it’s English English with all its differences in spelling, punctuation, and usage from American English; beyond that I have quarrels with translator Ann Born’s command of tense, which falters on occasion, taking the reader out of the story to reconstruct usage.
Small annoyances to the delight in this story, set in a forest at Norway’s northern border only scant miles from Sweden. The storyline splits into two, one the narrator’s vivid, detailed memories of his fifteenth year life with his father in that forest; the other of the sixty-five-year-old narrator, divorced and retired, who has returned to the forest to live out his remaining years.
I sense that my back is not too good and roll over onto my stomach and push myself over the edge of the bed with my knees down on the floor firs and then raise myself tentatively into a standing position. That goes well, but I am really stiff and sore after yesterday’s efforts. I go barefoot into the kitchen, past the dog and into the hall.
The boy’s father and companion, seen through the narrator’s memories, becomes an important secondary character, with his own exciting world war II resistance experiences and romance. Petterson is a grand shuffler of time so that we learn these twin story lines in bits that are often not chronological.
My father stroked his beard, squinted at the sun for a moment before he glanced sideways down at me where we stood on the steps.
‘What say you, Trond T.?’ he asked. Tobias is my middle name, but I would never use it, and the T. only turned up when my father wanted to sound a tad serious and it was a signal to me that now there was time to fool around a bit.
‘Ye-e-es,’ I said. ‘There might just be a possibility there.’
‘We do have some work of our own to see to as well,’ he said.
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘We have a few things to get out of the way, it’s not that, but maybe we could squeeze in a day or two we might jus about manage.’
We might, but it won’t be easy,’ said my father.
‘Yeah, it will be hard,’ I said. ‘One would have to say a barter in kind would probably come in handy.
‘You’re right there,’ said my father, looking at me with curiosity. ‘Bartering surely couldn’t be a bad thing.’
‘A horse with harness,’ I said. ‘For a few days of next week or the one after.’
‘Just so,’ my father said with a broad smile. ‘Right to a tee. What do you say to that, Barkald?’
Barkald had been standing there in the yard with a bewildered expression on his face as he listened to our contorted dialogue, and now he stepped right into the trap.
The storylines themselves are worth the read. But for me the greater pleasures were in Petterson’s descriptions of forest and lake, so like Jim Harrison in the pleasure they radiate, and his descriptions of quotidian experience. I’ve encountered no other writer who dared write in such exacting detail the movements involved in domestic and work life. His personal response to the activities and the skill and effort required to accomplish them make the descriptions absorbing in themselves.
The stove was crackling well. I open the bread box and cut a couple of slices, put water on to boil for coffee and then I hear Lyra give her shot sharp bark on the steps. It is her way of ringing the bell and is easy to distinguish from the other sounds she makes. I let her back in. She goes to lie down by the stove where the warmth is gradually spreading. I Ly a breakfast table for myself and prepare Lyra’s in her bowl, but she must wait her turn. I am the boss. I eat first.
My other great enjoyment in this novel is the characterizations of father and son. Rich and dimensional from the get-go, they become stranger, more perplexing at denouement and ending, so that I closed the final page of Out Stealing Horses still puzzling, still mentally creating scenarios to make sense of these men. The two of them will continue to tease my understanding through the years.
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