Out Stealing Horses not a steal

As a fiction writer and lifelong literature reader, I wanted to love Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses.

As a woman, I appreciate Petterson's male character's admission of the times when he disregards women's feelings or needs, but that's all the self-reflection this character truly has.

Overall, the book reads like a bad dream someone who never really learns how to think critically might have, and the 67 year old male narrator does not appear to be any more emotionally mature than the 15 year old male he remembers being. The only real note that he has "grown" in any meaningful way over those 52 years is for him to reflect that his father was right, "we do decide for ourselves when it will hurt."

The book left me feeling depressed because so many patriarchal cultures never make males truly grow up. Instead, they limit them to 2 emotions--anger and hatred--but this male character is so placid and lifeless that he never even feels those emotions. He reacts physically to what he learns, but never understands his own emotions.

Why did all these American newspapers supply blurbs for this book? Why such exaggeration on their part? Crap like "fluently jumbles"? Sounds like another self-aggrandizing male's "weave" that most of these newspapers and magazines believed, too.

Has the quality of literature fallen so far?