Book Review: Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

This slender novel, translated from the Norwegian is one of those slow reads that I generally prefer, but for some reason I failed to appreciate it. It's about an elderly man who has retired to an isolated cabin, only to find himself living next to a neighbor from his boyhood, with whom he shares painful memories.

The prose is beautiful, but beautiful in uneven ways: sometimes as plain as Cormac McCarthy in The Road, and sometimes very florid and descriptive. I wonder if the translation has an impact on that; that was the same criticism I had of Orhan Pamuk's Snow (which my book group renamed "Slow.")

There is a lot going on here: tragic accidents, wartime heroics, adultery, and logging - don't forget the logging - but the tale is told so quietly, so subtly, that I got a little impatient - it seems I'm in an unsubtle mood for my reading these days.