Per Petterson is one of the very few active novelists to have a personal and successful literary project. A writer, to understand each other, to name the first values that come to mind, far beyond Michel Houellebecq, Mircea Cartarescu or Jonathan Franzen in ambition and talent.
An important part of Petterson’s project runs through the dual function that his novels have: to deny, affirm, or expand upon what has already existed, as they can be read individually or as chapters that seem to be integrated (to include the whole) in a single future book. it has already been mentioned about other aspects of society, as well as about the life of the heroes of the time.
Going Out to Steal Horses is Petterson’s most stand-alone novel of his work in progress, and by its nature it has everything to confuse the reader: from the slightly honeyed title to its respectable debut (Trond, a man on the verge of retirement). , takes shelter in an isolated cabin), as the character experiences the frayed shifts between the present and the summer of puberty… But I can assure you this is a different novel from the cliché play.
Petterson’s most distinctive talents are immediately appreciated: his take on the naturalistic depiction of an emotional everyday life and his construction of mundane sounds. There is also a lot of work in these pages: mowing, removing snow, cutting trees. The eye gradually gets used to more subtle abilities, such as the contrast between the muted color palette of the present and the vivid brilliance of the past, or the rendering of some very daring ellipses.
What interests Petterson is not the psychological development of his character, but the accumulation of experience that makes him a different witness of the same event: the fascination and abandonment of a father. Everything that is told unfolds as the shock waves of the explosion that swept away the world of childhood.
Adult Trond ponders an issue that Petterson’s literature turns to again and again: the sudden unfolding of the catastrophic moment, the consequences of which remain to shape the lives of those who have suffered these disasters. So no one knows what kind of life you’ve built because no one knows your future.
The novel works on a binary incongruity: young Trond takes part in a series of experiences the scope of which he does not understand as well as his readers; In contrast, its readers are confronted with passages whose emotional charge we cannot understand only pages later, when we understand their future implications. This double instability is perpetuated by a very subtle handling of temporary lapses and changes, while the swaying of the narrators (two temporal moments of the same consciousness) provokes a thought-provoking play of prophecies, memories, premonitions, and accusations. Missed opportunities and open expectations overlap, blurring the flow of time.
Petterson sees time not as a continuous progression that never returns, but as a geometric shape that allows us to see things from different angles depending on our location. Out of this overlap and dissonance emerge some of the most exciting and unexpected scenes in contemporary literature.