Per Petterson's I Curse The River Of Time attracted me by the high praise on the cover by Richard Ford, Amy Tan, and Thomas McGuane. Then I saw he was Norwegian and that sealed the deal, as I love reading about life in Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
This novel 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 to 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.
Arvid has a hard time dealing with the changing society, and the divorce, so he 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 kind of a quiet book, but weighted with the piercing emotion of relationships.
It reads slow and simple. He 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.
About Arvid, with all his gifts and faults, the author has said "Sometimes I call him not my alterego but my stuntman."
It was fully rounded and I feel like I know him, spent time with him. I'm glad to have read it.
2010 / Hardcover / 233 pages
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