Per Petterson: Out Stealing Horses

[saliotthomas]

This is a great book,not to long,and plainty happens all the way.Wild horse rides,the war,outdoor work,and the infinite lanscape of Norway.
I like the slow construction of the story,the relations betwin characteres and their personality.
The friend Jong not looking his father in the eye,then we learn the fathers do not look at eachother themselves,the mother slowly coming in the frame,the war,the resistance.Each indication bring anothers,like the ravel bolero,two instrument,then three,ect,until a full complex partition is playing.
The fathers is really the spine of the novels,charismatic,strong,brave,but also inconsistent,to much on the surface of thing.
It was easy for me to warm up to the narrator.An old man who lost his wife and sister and try to give a sense to his last years by leading an harder but more meaningfulf life country.I liked his choices,he strips his life of all decorum,and i can undestand that in later years one wants to get the escence of things.One does not need to be entertained,or diverted from memories he need to understand.I hate entertainemt or entertaining for that matter.
What surprised me was the absence of drinking.Because those guys up in the north they just live for the booze,don't they.Not a drop.That's suspicious.
The only critic really is that i would have loved to know more about the fate of certain characteres,Jong,the mother,but his choice was to tell of this certain summer,of the friendship of a father and a son,of a betrayal,so be it.

Solid +

 

[cirque]

As ST says, its a book that that takes a bit to get used to the narrative tone. He has a unique voice, but once you get used to it, it becomes affective. His distancing himself from the world IS part of the story. Highly recommended.

 

[Peder]

I'll be giving it a second read. It feels that it requires one to fully pick up all that is there. As for no booze, sorry to hear that is a question with respect to my forebears. :sad:

 

[beer good]

If it's any consolation, I can tell you that there's a decent amount of boozing (so far) in Petterson's latest, I Curse The River Of Time.

 

[saliotthomas]

If it's any consolation, I can tell you that there's a decent amount of boozing (so far) in Petterson's latest, I Curse The River Of Time.

and i'm looking forward to your review of it.I must say that i still have vivid memories of the book.Time is one of the best adviser on the quality of writing and Out stealing horses still stands out with strong and original images,atmospheres and characteres(specialy the father).
Boozes or not.

 

[cirque]

I could almost recommend reading Out Stealing Horses on the strength of the last sentence alone. Which of Petterson's novels should I get next?


---

 

[Flowerdk4]

A kind friend pointed me to this thread as he knows that I love Per Petterson and right now Im reading "I curse the river of time"

Petterson is a master of words, of getting so much information within a sentence without it getting boring or too crowded with descriptions etc. Maybe that goes well with him being Norweigan instead of Italian.

Just read this:
"Og det er muligt jeg så det, på hendes ryg, at hun tog sig sammen og møjsommeligt flyttede vægten fra ét punkt til et andet inde i kroppen et sted, fra der hvor hun var, til der hvor hun tænkte at jeg måske var."

My translation into english:
""And it is possible that I saw it, on her back, that she pulled herself together and laboriously shifted the weight from one point to another somewhere inside the body, from where "she" was, to where she thought "I" maybe was..."


Just in 3 lines, Petterson, not only let the main character sit down next to his mother on a rock by the sea, he tells us about her and about them, and also about his thoughts and feelings for her. You can almost feeling the invisble string connceting them. He uses the movement she makes to make room for him, to decribe their relationship, all in one go!
Excellently done! Shows just how Petterson master each word so precisesly and without giving the reader the feeling that he is holding back with what he wants to say. Precise and yet full with so much intense vibrations of their relationship.

He is such a joy to read! Great stories and excellent mastership of lanuage! I eat his books and turn pages eager to get more and more...and yet I feel the great language he is capable of.

In case you dont know this, then you read about one main character, Arvid Jansen in many of his books. But you can read each book seperately.
His latest, the one Im referring to, "I curse the river of time" won Nordic counsil literature prize 2009 and he deserved it.

Peder, I hope you will re-read "Out stealing horses" and grow to love it! I think you get a good feel of Norway and Scandiavia in his books. Also you could read Lars Saabye Christensen, who is also from Norway and translated into English.

 

[beer good]

"Og det er muligt jeg så det, på hendes ryg, at hun tog sig sammen og møjsommeligt flyttede vægten fra ét punkt til et andet inde i kroppen et sted, fra der hvor hun var, til der hvor hun tænkte at jeg måske var."

My translation into english:
""And it is possible that I saw it, on her back, that she pulled herself together and laboriously shifted the weight from one point to another somewhere inside the body, from where "she" was, to where she thought "I" maybe was..."

Yeah, that bit was brilliant. Truth be told though, while I'm loving his way with language, I'm still waiting for that moment where everything clicks and you go "Aha, so that's why he needed to write this book." It's reminding me a lot of Banville's The Sea, and I wasn't a huge fan of that book. But we'll see what I make of it when I've finished.

 

[Flowerdk4]

Yeah, that bit was brilliant. Truth be told though, while I'm loving his way with language, I'm still waiting for that moment where everything clicks and you go "Aha, so that's why he needed to write this book." It's reminding me a lot of Banville's The Sea, and I wasn't a huge fan of that book. But we'll see what I make of it when I've finished.

I think it VERY unfair to compare Petterson with Banville! :angry:

Where Banville seems to try to impress the reader with his long sentences, Petterson is short and precise and never goes on and on!

As to why he needed to write a book and the feeling of missing the final click where everything goes well together. I dont have that longing. To me you get the answers on the way while reading... Its not a detective story where everything unfolds at the end, but stories of feelings, connections between people, how they see themselves and each other....

Im glad that you acknowledge his great way with words!

 

[beer good]

I think it VERY unfair to compare Petterson with Banville! :angry:

...Sorry? It's not like I compared him to Dan Brown. (I could have compared him to Helle Helle, but nobody here would have gotten that reference.)

As to why he needed to write a book and the feeling of missing the final click where everything goes well together. I dont have that longing. To me you get the answers on the way while reading... Its not a detective story where everything unfolds at the end, but stories of feelings, connections between people, how they see themselves and each other....

I never said I wanted it to be like a detective story. It's not about plot. It's about what he's trying to get across beyond just beautiful prose - why he felt it was important that we get to learn these characters. Maybe it'll all fall into place for me yet. So far, I like the book, but I have a feeling it could get even better.

 

[Flowerdk4]

...Sorry? It's not like I compared him to Dan Brown. (I could have compared him to Helle Helle, but nobody here would have gotten that reference.)

Apology accepted!

I think its very unfair as their style of writing is not the same and they write from different "places". I got the feeling that Banville wanted to impress and makes it a project almost to describe scenery etc., where with Petterson you sense the reason why Petterson describes things, its not just for the decoration, it goes beyond that, in my view. In Petterson you have this Scandinavian feel to his writing...hard to put into words what it is exactly...but its there alright!

Im afraid I still have Helle Helle on my list of Danish authors to get to know.

I never said I wanted it to be like a detective story. It's not about plot. It's about what he's trying to get across beyond just beautiful prose - why he felt it was important that we get to learn these characters. Maybe it'll all fall into place for me yet. So far, I like the book, but I have a feeling it could get even better.

I felt it was obvious in "Out stealing horses" that he was writing about a man´s travel within himself and his life and as Thomas said the relationship between a father and son.

In "I curse the river of time", Im getting the feeling that its about mother and son, life cricis, how we deal with them and each other.

Maybe you somehow seek a kind of moral or lesson or knowledge besides the questions he asks in the book?

 

[beer good]

I think its very unfair as their style of writing is not the same and they write from different "places". I got the feeling that Banville wanted to impress and makes it a project almost to describe scenery etc., where with Petterson you sense the reason why Petterson describes things, its not just for the decoration, it goes beyond that, in my view. In Petterson you have this Scandinavian feel to his writing...hard to put into words what it is exactly...but its there alright!

I never compared their writing styles. More their types of storytelling; long, introspective, life-crisis type of things that may or may not matter a lot to themselves, but not necessarily as much to me.

Im afraid I still have Helle Helle on my list of Danish authors to get to know.

Rødby-Puttgarden is brilliant.

Maybe you somehow seek a kind of moral or lesson or knowledge besides the questions he asks in the book?

Not really, no. Just some sort of general idea of the author's beyond "here's how this fictional character feels about certain fictional things". I wish I could be more specific than that, but as with all things in "art", I'll know it when I find it.

 

[Flowerdk4]

Now I have checked, Per Petterson lost 4 family members in a fire on the ferry called Scandinavian Star in 1990, his parents, his brother and a cusin.
He has said often in the interviews he has given, that he only writes about what he knows and have experienced in some way.

Here is an interview with Petterson in the danish newspaper, Politiken:

Når nordmænd går i kloster - Politiken.dk

 

[beer good]

Per Petterson: Jeg forbanner tidens elv (I Curse The River Of Time, 2008 )

Per Petterson lifts the title of his novel is from a Mao Zedong poem, fittingly enough.

Pale images of departure, the village as it was then
I curse the river of time; thirty-two years have passed

Arvid is one of those who, as a young man in the early 70s when everything seemed possible, thought he could change the world, revolution, worker power, all that. Now it's 1989, the Berlin wall has fallen, he just got back from a protest against the killings at Tiananmen square, his marriage to the girl he once wanted to lead to the barricades is falling apart, and his mother just discovered that she has cancer. When Arvid hears that she has gone off on her own to their old summer home in Denmark, he decides to be the responsible son (and not at all the little boy longing for his mom, heavens forfend) and join her to make sure she's OK. Except it turns out that he's not really welcome. And so they sit there, getting on each other's nerves, while Arvid tries to figure out how the hell he ended up here.

And they say Scandinavians are somber.

Mid-to-end-life crises, memories of dead loved ones, troubled relationships between parents and grown children, all set at a childhood vacation spot... anyone want to compare this to Banville's The Sea yet? If you do, you'll be both spot on and way off. Sure, the plot has similarities, but as in all things, it's not what you've got but what you do with it. Where Banville's introvert ruminations on life, death and memories thereof only looks within, Petterson's characters try to look up and at each other – and the tragedy is more that they fail. The entire book is full of things that were never said, memories to painful to handle, polite Lutheran phrases sneaking quietly over Munchian bridges. Where Banville likes to show off his poetic high-polish prose (someone said it's so perfect it belongs in a museum with the words DO NOT TOUCH in front), Petterson and Arvid keep their thoughts down to earth, precise, natural, leaving air enough for the reader to do some of the work. We get to follow Arvid and his mother in sporadic moments over 15 years, two people and two generations bouncing off each other, trying – not very successfully – to make the other understand them.It's beautiful, it's poignant, it's funny, and it's occasionally quite brilliant.

And yet, precisely because of how good it is, it leaves me with a slight touch of disappointment, because I'm not sure any of it matters all that much. Petterson, like his characters, stays at a distance and leaves a little too much unspoken. I get the feeling that the real protagonist of the story is Arvid's mother, but since Arvid doesn't know her, we never really do either. Obviously you shouldn't expect novels to have a clear moral and an end that ties absolutely everything together, but surely after 250 pages there should be some sense of development? Can he offer nothing but doom?

I Curse The River Of Time is difficult to shake off, despite (or perhaps because of) that "…" that runs throughout the text. Petterson doesn't belong in a museum, his novel needs to touch and be touched. At its best, it just about manages both - even if at some points I want to quote Mao at it and tell it to piss or get off the pot.