Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson

A friend has been singing the praises of this book for several months now. Originally in Norwegian, it was translated into the English by Anne Born, and has won a handful of awards including the 2007 Dublin IMPAC Award. My curiosity was piqued enough to request it from the library. I must admit that the cover did nothing for me; a rather desultory image of a horse grazing outside a ramshackle timber house. But here is a lesson on not judging a book by its cover - from a few pages in, the writing had begun to draw me in. Don't let the title put you off - the book is not about thieving, or even about horses. The phrase is simply a code that crops up several times in the story.

An elderly Trond Sander has cut ties with his life in the city and moved to an isolated cabin in a remote area of Norway. His wife and sister are dead, and he has not bothered to tell his daughters of his plans (a fact we learn later in the book). His only neighbour is another elderly man in a cottage a little distance away, a man who keeps to himself. Until one day, Trond meets him, and it triggers memories of a summer far back in his past, a summer that has shaped his life and character.

The story moves in three strands; Trond in the current time coming to terms with his life, the summer of 1948 which Trond spends with his father, and a third storyline set during the war and focussing on Trond's father. The story is narrated inside Trond's head, so there is very little dialogue. It is in effect a coming-of-age story told through the medium of an old man's memories. What sets the book apart is the writing. The prose is dreamy and languid, and the story unravels in the most unhurried pace. Petterson's language is very evocative; he describes haymaking and timber-felling in minute and poetic detail. His descriptions of nature are among the best I've read.

"I switch on the torch. It is blowing massively, there is chaos in the light from the torch when I swing it round, the reeds lie flat on the lake, white foam on the water, and there is a howling sound from the bare treetops bending over."

Be warned, the story is so simple that you might be left feeling a little let-down. If you're looking for a page-turner packed with incidents, this is not for you. This is a book in which nothing much happens, but the nothing much happens beautifully.