盜馬記

Title: Out Srealing Horses
Author: Petterson, Per (1952 - )
Translated by Anne Born from Norwegian
New York: Picador, 2003 (c2005)
238 p. ; 23 cm
Read by: 02/16/2011, Borrowed from the WBPL
Genre: Fiction

This book surprised me. The story started in a quiet winter in a quiet country with embedded stories happened in a summer during World War II. The author skillfully switched between the contrast without making it busy at all. Instead, I quite enjoy the told solitude and wisdom about life. I never felt the author was in a hurry to give stories, things took their time to happen in a simple fashion, just like in our real life. And yet they were a lot and too bewildering for us to digest fully before the next happening. Life goes on this way in no time we are old. What I liked most was not the story, but the writing. The author is a master, he left plenty space for the readers to stretch their minds between lines, rather filling our minds with busy intrigue plots. It is very much like the difference between Hollywood movies and independent movies. The former may grab us and shock us, but what will stay with us longer is the latter.

I have a special feeling for Norway, the land I explored and loved. Maybe I shall buy a copy and read it second time before I see Norway again.

Main characters:

Trond: the narrator, a boy from Oslo at age 15 in that summer, who was shy, admired his father while spending the summer with him in a forest near Sweden

Lon: Trond’s summer friend, who turned stranger and ran away from home after an accident

Lars: Lon’s little brother, later became Trond’s neighbor in that winter.

Trond’s father and Lon’s mother do not have names

Franz: Trond’s father’s friend who lives near the cottage

Barkald: The owner of a nearby farm with horses which Trond and Lon once tried to steal

Ellen: Trond’s eldest daughter