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I am looking for opinions about two specific moments in this book and two more general queries.

1) The basis for the destruction of the bird's nest by Jon - is this act an outpouring of frustration over what has happened to his brother - is this Jon's way of feebly attempting to gain a sense of control over the cruelty of nature/fate?

2) The potential assault of the man in the street in Karlstad by Trond - is this also an outpouring of frustration - perhaps a sense of frustration that has built up in Trond in not being able to meet his father and confront him with his raw sense of betrayal by him. Is the man in the street, a substitute for his father?

3) General query one - Trond seems to have intentionally cut himself away from his remaining family - his daughters, and seems to have been generally aloof to them as they grew up. Is this because he does not wish them to experience the intense loss of his own relationship with his father, Trond's aloofness being a sort of inverted protection, or is he just not bothered because he has not got a son whom he could have brought to these forest retreats and treated well and not abandoned?

3) General query two - is the return by Trond to a rural "idyll" 52 years after his time spent in a similar "idyll" with his father an attempt to go back and revisit and make sense of these losses and betrayals or is it a desire to revisit and relive the happiness he had felt in such surroundings prior to the death of Odd, the loss of Jon's friendship, and his paternal abandonment?

Out Stealing Horses: A Novel
By Per Petterson

Product Description

We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and oneof the first days of July.

Trond's friend Jon often appeared at his doorstep with an adventure in mind for the two of them. But this morning was different. What began as a joy ride on "borrowed" horses ends with Jon falling into a strange trance of grief. Trond soon learns what befell Jon earlier that day--an incident that marks the beginning of a series of vital losses for both boys.

Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer.

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This "response" offers absolutely no answers to any of my queries