A review by spaceisavacuum
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

I normally like to just sit back and enjoy my Per Petterson novella. His concise description of tundra Norwegian landscapes and lifestyle is always a rare treat that calls for simple, easy reading and relaxing. It’s Fine by Me follows Audun, an 18 year old circa Nixon-Era America, following news about NATO’s presence expansion to the East and Nixon’s withdrawal announced over radio circuits. But the book isn’t so much about political happenings, as with Petterson it’s always about a character, and for Audun who begins working in a printing press… it happens to be quite dangerous work. He keeps on with it despite starting conflagrations with the machine, employee’s losing fingers of their hands and his abusive, alcoholic father and they often have black eyes, he and his mother Kari. He begins working a paper route.

“We are reading about the Melting Pot. The Golden America, the land of freedom and equality, the haven for the homeless and persecuted, the melon they all want a slice of, the fields they all want to plough. Poor folk from Hardanger in Norway, the Abruzzi in Italy, and the Ukraine fleeing from landowners, Cossacks and the taxman, the bastards who bleed the smallholder dry until there’s nothing left to eat except granite, and if you are not an Indian or a Negro, you may have a chance to see a future ahead of you and a patch of land on the prairie.“

Audun works his way up the ladder, delivers papers, frequently hangs around Gardermoen airport (a very beautiful airport, I’ve seen it.) The weathers cooling down, thick slurry is forming in the fjords, and Christmas is around the corner. They deliver a calf named Ferdinand who will grow up to be a bull. The stacker catches a blaze, cuts off a piece of his ear, might’ve sliced his head. A good novel about the dangerous conditions working in a paper mill. All that’s left is to bury the dead. #perpetterson #outstealinghorses