Out Stealing Horses (Drama)

by Per Petterson (translated by Anne Born)

Published: Picador (April 29th, 2008)

Paperback, 238 pages

       “In the course of one month they both died, and after they were gone I lost interest in talking to people. I really do not know what to talk to them about. That is one reason for living here. Another reason is being close to the forest. It was a part of my life many years ago in a way that nothing else has been, and then it was absent for a long, long time, and when everything around me suddenly turned silent, I realized how much I had missed it. Soon I thought of nothing else, and if I too were not to die, at precisely that point in time, I had to go to the forest. That’s how it felt, and that simple. It still is.”

          This is another rambling novel, almost pseudo-stream-of-consciousness, where the first person protagonist rambled on and on, with many divergent comments before getting to the point. As is usual with these types of novels, all grammar regulation is tossed out the window, as you can see in the paragraph above. While this sort of deconstructionist prose can be done well (see the works of Raymond Federman and Cormac McCarthy) this novel does not do it. It is a rather rambling and boring product.

It falls flat in that the novel simply does not go all the way, as it should. It is a half-assed approach to the style, which produces a mediocre concept between the two. If you’re going to deconstruct don’t just ramble, play with rules and forms and completely abandon any grammar. What we have here is a protagonist that is neither very interesting, nor generates any pathos. He is a simple dull person that something horrible happened to in his past and has retreated into the woods to deal with it. While it does have flashbacks inside of flashbacks, and plays expertly with time and space, the prose isn’t enough to keep the world interesting. The double meanings of the plot is well done, one of the book’s highlights, but the narrative takes too long to get interesting. A reader has to push on to nearly halfway through the book before the mystery really unfolds.

Author Per Petterson

 I always have a policy of finishing a book once started, I found myself rushing through the pages in order to get it over with. While some of the fault of the poor presentation of this book might fall onto the translator, I believe much of it has to do with the original prose.

          Many of the literary community have leapt on this book, heaping it with laurels and praises, but this seems to be part of the domino effect of the literary snob world, where one person says it's brilliant and everyone has to jump on the bandwagon lest they appear uncultured. Several of them are commenting that the novel employs a minimalist style. That is, a simple style and short words to demonstrate the protagonist’s state of mind- a simple man of the woods. This falls flat, as minimalist also means minimal description, which the novel does not do. It is riddled with dull description (sure they add to the protagonist's character, but there has to be a limit). In my mind, a good book has  generate interest either in the plot or the characters (hopefully both), Out Stealing Horses fails to do either.

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.