Book Review: Out Stealing Horses

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

I always pay close attention to the New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of the Year. Not every book on the last will appeal to me, but the description of Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, and the heaps of praise it received, put it on my list immediately.

The book is not about horses; don't be misled. It is about attempting to escape the past and how it will catch up with you. A theme I enjoy. Despite the narrator's relocation to remote northern Norway, with his dog and his out of place Nissan station wagon, circumstances and coincidence lead him to relive events in his past.

I appreciated this book for many reasons. Thematically, it is something I can appreciate. I love the romantic notion of packing up your essentials and moving far away to a one room cabin and wilderness outside the window. And there is enough violence and tragedy here to please me.

It wasn't until Hamsun's name appeared in the text that I realized that I'd read another Norwegian novel just a couple of books back. Though Hunger is a classic of sorts, this book fulfills in ways that it did not. The characters are rich and shaken. And there's plenty of story here to keep you reading.

I would certainly highly recommend this book. I would put this book on a shelf with others I was proud to have read.

Book Review: The Death of Sweet Mister

The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell

Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone was one of the best books I've ever read, so I naturally picked up several of his other novels. The Death of Sweet Mister is populated with the same sort of misfits. It feels wrong to call them hillbillies, but the events of the novel fulfill some of our worst ideas of the dwellers of the backwoods and hollows of the Ozarks. Like Winter's Bone, the central character of this novel is also a juvenile, but with none of the same spunk and determination.

There is much violence and general brutality here, a world bleak and desperate, but rendered with precision. Woodrell's writing talent is certainly on display here, though the book is hardly as haunting as Winter's Bone. And though I enjoyed it, the novel has elements that are disturbing and hard to get past.

Book Review: Hunger

Hunger by Knut Hamsun

I love confessional novels with narrators expressing their maladies, coming clean on their madness. I love novels of mad desperation, of wanderers, of those lost in a world that is too big and overwhelming. This book, though, is no Notes from Underground. This is no Season in Hell, no Maldoror.

Hamsun's narrator is poor and hungry, driven by some sort of will he cannot control to do idiotic things. And this might be okay. It could be a good place to start, but there is no advancement. There are small dilemmas that take some time to resolve, but the narrator does not change. He does not get worse. His madness and hunger do not accelerate to a point where you know something horrible is likely to happen. His undirected will doesn't even take him on any significant adventures or put him in too much danger.

This book sounded like something I would like and even coming in with that expectations, the book did not succeed. I was disappointed.

Book Review: The Easter Parade

The Easter Parade by Richard Yates

I read somewhere that The Easter Parade was Richard Yates's most depressing book. I doubt that it was really written like that, but I was already a fan of Revolutionary Road and his short stories, so I picked up the book and was eager to get to it. Sometimes, though, your impression of the book you're reading is impacted by the books you read immediately before that one. Coming off two good reads, I was disappointed by this one.

The Easter Parade is the story, the life story really, of two sisters. Things for them and between them never really improve. We watch the same disjointeness over decades. While we are sad to see people not live up to their potential, it diverges so little from the normal course of life that we are hardly surprised.

I enjoy Yates's more formal style. It is immediately confortable and unpretentious. It is writing like you learned in AP English. And that is a nice change from many more modern novles.

In no way did the book live up to Revolutionary Road. Here the misery was quiet, buried under complacency and compromise. So, it was depressing, yes. I just was looking for something that would strike me a little deeper.