Out Stealing Horses

Norway. The solitude and the peace of the forests. The opportunity to live a life of reflection and peace, calmed – cossetted even – by the scent of the trees and the flash of sunlight on water.

When Per Petterson was writing his novel In the Wake (a dark and loosely autobiographical tale of a man struggling to come to terms with the loss of his parents and two younger brothers in a ferry accident) the idea came to him that he would like to write a book in which he gave the characters to the landscape.

He also wanted to write sympathetically about the love between a father and a son. In both aims he succeeded, for Out Stealing Horses is a gentle and extremely moving book.

Trond is a 67-year-old man who moves to an isolated part of Norway following the death of his wife. Surrounded by the pines and birches of the forest, and with only his faithful dog Lyra for company, he sets about creating for himself a simple and self-contained life that will offer him inner peace. ‘My plan for this place is quite simple. It is to be my final home. How long that might be for is something I haven’t given much thought to. It is one day at a time here.’

Occasional visits to the local village for supplies give him as much contact with other people as he needs. One night, however, a chance encounter with a man brings back memories of one significant summer from Trond’s adolescence, just after the end of the Second World War.

Petterson’s characters are embedded in the landscape and the seasons, the drifting snows of winter and the burning sunshine of high summer: ‘The sun was high in the sky now, it was hot under the trees, it smelt hot, and from everywhere in the forest around us there were sounds; of beating wings, of branches bending and twigs breaking, and the scream of a hawk and a hare’s last sigh, and the tiny muffled boom each time a bee hit a flower.’ This is the drowsiness of summer afternoons, the scent of resin in the nostrils.

But Petterson’s characters are no mere ciphers in this story. The adolescent Trond is caught between adult- and childhood, still willing to go out riding horses with his friend Jon, but also aware of the shifting nature of the adult relationships around him and susceptible to the lure of love. He loves his adventurous father, but the consequences of their summer together will be far-reaching.

As the story shifts back and forth in time we learn about the part Trond's father played during the war, and we are reminded that although isolation can bring its own rewards, human beings rarely exist in a vacuum. Ultimately, Out Stealing Horses is about making choices and about free will; the past affects all of our decisions in some way or other.