Claim Now Out Stealing Horses Designed And Illustrated By Per Petterson Readily Available As PDF
evocative title lured me into buying this book, It starts out as your typical autumn recalls the beginning of Summer type story as an older man, settling into a basic cottage by a lake in search of solitude plainly a hard task, but someone has to do it in southern Norway, hard by the border with Sweden, recalls his youth in the same area.
Some sexual tension as he recalls watching the deft fingered milkmaid at her work and the faded cotton dress clinging to the woman sweating as she is out helping a bunch of men and the narrator fell a stand of timber.
Then abruptly with the turn of a page we are in to another world, We're in the war, the narrator's father was involved in the resistance, couriering documents in and out of neutral Sweden, The thing about war is that it shifts relationships, particularly in these civil conflicts when there is an element of collaboration as well as resistance and after the war the narrator's family is abruptly broken up by a letter from the father declaring that he won't come home again but has left a sum of money in a country bank for his wife to collect from Sweden.
This is a reflective book, in which the reader constructs the story as far as they can in their imagination, beyond the basic facts as above it is open to much interpretation.
An excellent novel about chainsawing birch trees and decisions as mappable points in a life and deciding when something should hurt or not in the narrator's case about forty years after the event.
Very evocative, particularly about that way in which journeying to certain places literally takes us back into the past, something which I felt particularly strongly as a child when I was taken to my great grandfather's house and sat below his ticking clock until I might be allowed to clamber off and admire the halfwild cat a fiercesome beast in the garden or the panes of glass in his attic left there since he had retired, or the empty pig stalls and generally the museum of a life left over from an earlier age.
What do we see when we look back over our lives, Are we the hero of our own story Looking into that mirror, can we really see ourselves, or is our view doomed to be perpetually blocked, offering maybe a Maigret image of only the backs of our heads
A man,, Trond, lives alone in a small house by a lake in east Norway and contemplates his past.
We travel back and forth between the present,, andwhen he was a fifteenyearold, living with his father in a summer place, The events of that summer defined his life in many ways, This is his coming of age story,
Per Petterson image from NPR
I was very much of two minds about this book, For the first half, maybe two thirds, I loved it, thought it might be a masterpiece, There is a rich store of allusion here, imagery that fills, language that offers structure and beauty in support of its aims, storytelling craft that mostly worked very well, But I found that the back third left me
dry,
If I could I would have given it,stars.
There are events in the story that call for some more drama in how Trond reacts, yet he often seems incapable, Maybe that was the authors intent, I dont know, but I found it unsatisfying, Too many questions were left up in the air for my comfort, The book made me wonder, though, if the authors great gifts have been put to more satisfying use in other works,
I was impressed with how Petterson modulated the pace and tone of his words, I loved the sparse, clipped sentences that open the book,
"Early November. Its nine oclock. The titmice are banging against the window, There is a reddish light over the trees by the lake, It is starting to blow, "
This reflects well the starkness of the character, how his life is as stripped down as the words,
Pettersons style grows appropriately breathless when painting a haying scene:
"As the wire gradually unrolled it became easier, but by then I was that much more exhausted, and there was suddenly an opposition to everything that was physical and I grew mad and did not want anyone there to see I was such a city boy, particularly while Jons mother was looking at me with that blinding blue gaze of hers.
Id make up my own mind when it would hurt, and if it should show or not, and I pushed the pain down into my body so my face would not gibe me away, and with arms raised I unrolled the reel and the wire ran out until I came to the end of the meadow, and there I put the reel down in the short stubble of the newly mown grass, the wire taut, all as calmly as I could and just as calmly straightened up and pushed my hands into my pockets and let my shoulders sink down.
"
There are many references that add a feeling of substance and connection to the work, references to Dickens, Oedipus, Maigret, the River Styx, Petterson likes to mirror events and images, Being run off the road is used several times, crossing the river Styx from one life to another, several watery baptisms, But while the imagery satisfies the thinness of Trond leaves one wanting something more,
last posted November,
First Published January,An impressive novel about the fragility of memories and the aching feeling of loss which can haunt us throughout our lives.
The novel is written in steadily clipped sentences full of poetical images, melancholy and wonderful descriptions of natural beauty, I simply loved
it. A novel which cannot be praised enough!
As chilly as its Norwegian setting, Petterson's novel continues to haunt my thoughts weeks after reading it, Its very title and the many allusions to cowboy culture made me think about what frontier and reinvention means if the edge of the world is vast and dramatically sculpted desert that only ends with limitless ocean, or claustrophobic forest that transitions into Arctic ice.
But mostly it made me think about no matter how much we think we know about others and ourselves, it's never complete nor definite, As Petterson writes, "People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are.
What they do is fill in with their own feelings and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook.
No one can touch you unless you yourself want them to, You only have to be polite and smile and keep paranoid thoughts at bay, because they will talk about you no matter how much you squirm, it is inevitable, and you would do the same thing yourself.
" My highest recommendation. This is a story of growth, of a boy who becomes an adult in an isolated rural region of Norway, close to the Swedish border, in the course of one summer.
But this is also a story of decline, of an old man who revisits the countryside where he last saw his father in, expecting to capture the blinding light of indifferent nature, the flashing clarity of unhurried memories, the physical vigor that pumped up his young body more than sixty years ago before the clock of his wornout life ticks out.
Two stories and a single firstperson narrator, at first separated by the unbridgeable abyss of time, end up converging in a tapestry of revelations and silences that bespeak of the invisible threads that weave fate and chance, choice and serendipity together.
In Pettersons world there is no place for farfetched coincidences, everything that happens in the life of his characters is a direct result of their actions in a specific moment in time.
A family man falls in love with a married woman who shares his political ideals in wartime, when people got murdered if they were on the wrong side,
Five years later, a boy on the brim of adulthood who idolatrizes his father, discovers eroticism, betrayal and death all at once, resulting in premature responsibility for actions that were beyond his control.
An abandoned son faces two forked paths that will determine the man he is going to become in a future seared by the incommensurable absence of his father, Meanwhile, the very same forest that saw him blossom with life in summertime, witnesses the gradual decrease of his energy when the bucolic landscape is covered in snowdrift during his last winter.
The power of this book remains in what is left unsaid, in the minimalistic poetry of concentrated meaning, in the slowmoving pace that leaves one breathless, wanting to absorb the magnetic pull of every disclosed thought, be it of immense happiness or unbearable sorrow.
A number of recurrent sentences and imagery is used in different contexts to provide a delicate map of motifs that infuse the story with a cyclical undercurrent that recalls the passing seasons of the protagonists life that is now setting in wintry stillness.
Out stealing horses is a weightless ode to letting go of versions we could have been to embrace the truths that shaped the persons we are, Pettersons clearsighted prose is a journey back in time to make peace with the past and reconcile the present to the intensity of silence and light, which if rightly combined, can produce the most harmonious sound.
My first by this author, it wont be the last, "I believe we shape our lives ourselves, at any rate I have shaped mine, for what its worth, and I take complete responsibility, But of all the places I might have moved to, I had to land up precisely here, "
Im a sucker for these selfreflective sort of novels where the narrator looks back on his or her life and we as readers have the opportunity to make that journey as well.
Im also crazy about subtle language that in its simplicity still manages to deliver a powerful punch to the readers gut, Author Per Petterson sure seems to have a gift, and I adored the writing in this gorgeous piece of Scandinavian literature,
Trond Sander, now in the twilight of his years at the age of sixtyseven, has decided to move into a small house in eastern Norway where he plans to live out his days in isolation.
An unexpected encounter with another man triggers a flood of memories from Tronds past, The story alternates between the end of the millennium to, where at the age of fifteen he spent the summer living in a cabin with his father during treefelling season.
In some ways, this is a coming of age tale, though by no means is it a young adult story, There perhaps comes a time in our lives when we recognize the fact that our parents are not perfect human beings, What do we do with this information There are exquisite passages about regret, grief, bitterness, sensual desire, abandonment, friendship, and aging,
"Time is important to me now, I tell myself, Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but be only time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.
"
This novel also beautifully illustrates the link between individuals and the natural world, The feeling of vitality that working with the land and the river can instill in a person is juxtaposed with the apprehension of facing a harsh winter alone, It is the summer of ones youth when so much lies ahead, and the winter of ones maturity where all that seems to remain are the memories,
"And when someone says the past is a foreign country, that they do things differently there, then I have probably felt that way for most of my life because I have been obliged to, but I am not anymore.
If I just concentrate I can walk into memorys store and find the right shelf with the right film and disappear into it and still feel in my body that ride through the forest with my father"
This is a book you cannot read for the plot, or you may be disappointed.
Much of what happens occurred in the past, and although it is weighty stuff, the story is not propelled by the action, Instead it is driven by the reflections of how those things affected not just one person, but a string of persons, How an act reverberates across people and over a length of time, Much like one tree felled by a swift strike by the ax will echo throughout the entire forest,
The more I think about this book, the more I realize just how affecting it really is, I read this at a time when life is becoming extremely hectic, changes lie ahead, hopefully all for the best, I was happy to sit with a quiet novel that made me think, Actually, I loved this.
" I have nothing against the face in the mirror, I acknowledge it, I recognize myself, I cannot ask for more, " مفهوم اصلی کتاب به هوای دزدیدن اسب ها نوشته پتر پترسون نویسنده نروژی را می توان طبعیت و اثر آن بر انسان ها و روابط میان آنان دانست نویسنده طبیعت سخت گوشه ای در شمال شرق نروژ را با قدرت توصیف کرده کتاب او سرشار از رودها دریاچه ها درخت ها و کوه ها ست, کلبه هایی چوبی که در فاصله هایی دور از هم هستند مردمی که سرمای شدید و برف آنها را در خانه های خود محصور کرده و به گونه ای در طی سالیانی دراز این مردمان به تنهایی خود خو گرفته اند.
داستان پترسون دو زمان یکی نوجوانی تروند سادر در سالیان پس از جنگ جهانی دوم و اشغال نروژ و دیگری پیری او را نشان می دهد. ساندر در سالمندی خود به همان روستایی باز گشته که درسالگی همراه با پدر در آن زندگی می کرده در کلبه ای در دل جنگل نزیک رودخانه.
توصیفات پترسون از طبیعت جنگل و رودخانه شگفت انگیز است او چنان عطر چوب درختان زمزمه رودخانه صدای سوختن هیزم ماهی گیری و البته برف و سرما را توصیف کرده که خواننده را مشتاق به زیستن در چنین طبیعتی می کند گرچه که تقریبا تمامی وقت پدر و پسر به کار در مزرعه قطع کردن درختان و انداختن تنه آنها به آب و نگه داری اسب و نه مست طبیعت شدن سپری می شود.
نقطه عطف داستان را می توان در روبرو شدن تروند با لارس دانست این امر بهانه ای می شود که خاطرات تابستان و دوستان و همسایگانش را به یاد آورد. فاجعه ای که یون برادر لارس به همراه خود لارس می آفریند نه نها زندگی خانواده یون را متلاشی و لارس را در اندوهی سخت عمیق فرو می برد بلکه زندگی تروند و پدر او را هم دگرگون می کند. داستان پترسون سرشار از افرادی ایست که به بهانه ای خانه خود را ناگهان و بی دلیل ترک می کنند و نه توجه چندانی به خانواده رها شده خود دارند و نه بابت این جدایی اندوهی حس می کنند. آنها می روند و افراد خانواده چه تروند و یا چه لارس می مانند و جای خالی آنها.
به هوای دزدیدن اسب ها تفسیرو تعریف متفاوتی ایست از تنهایی تنهایی و مرزهای آن. نویسنده سبب حال عجیب خود را تنهایی می داند. از نگاه او در تنهایی ایست که تفاوت میان حرف زدن و حرف نزدن به تدریج از میان می رود تعریف او از تنها بودن شگفت انگیز است : این گفت و گوی پایان ناپذیر درونی که همیشه با خودمان داریم با گفت و گوی مان با معدود افرادی که هنوز می بینیم شان در هم می آمیزد و زمانی که تنها زندگی می کنی مرز میان این ها از نظر ناپدید می شود و تو نمی دانی کی از آن مرز گذشته ای.