I Curse The River Of Time by Per Petterson

Per Petterson is a favourite author.

I Curse The River Of Time won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, the Norwegian Critics Prize, the Brage Prize and has sold over 100,000 copies in Norway. His other book Out Stealing Horses was also multiple prize winner, and he has been translated into more than 40 languages.

The story takes place in Norway in 1989. While communism is unraveling all over Europe (the title is a line from Mao), Arvid continues to go to meetings and chooses a job on the factory floor over a higher education. The girl he met and married is now divorcing him. His mother, who has been diagnosed with cancer, quits her job in a chocolate factory and leaves the family to spend time alone at her family's cabin in Denmark.

Having a hard time dealing with the changing society, and the divorce, Arvid follows her to Denmark. He has had an awkward relationship with his mother, who seems quite the curmudgeon, and tries several different ways to connect with her.

The story seamlessly flashes back and forth between this relationship, and his meeting his wife many years before. They were young and idealistic, and worked with their comrades to follow the party line. Has has the ferry ride to Denmark and a few intense days at the cabin to think the past and present over.

It's a quiet book, slow and simple, weighted with the piercing emotion of relationships.

Arvid spends a lot of time walking the city streets - He seemed always heading along the tramlines of Carl Berners Plass - and later, in Denmark, visiting neighbourhoods and meeting old friends.

His strained relationship with his Mother is always in the background, but it takes two to resolve. He was an interesting character, and while nothing much happens over the few days in the Summer he is in Denmark, I found it cautiously optimistic. This was fully rounded and I feel like I know him, spent time with him.

About Arvid, with all his gifts and faults, the author has said "Sometimes I call him not my alterego but my stuntman."

2010 / Hardcover / 233 pages