I CURSE THE RIVER OF TIME

Arvid Jansen’s world is spinning out of control. It’s 1989, and communism is crumbling, along with the Berlin Wall, his marriage, and his mother’s health. She’s dying of cancer and feels the need to return to her family home in Denmark. Arvid follows her, and as she deals with her illness, he examines his own life choices, coming to grips with the transient nature of life. Narrator Jefferson Mays allows only a hint of Arvid’s self-pity to come though, instead opting for the matter-of-fact stoicism of Petterson’s clean, spare prose. With intelligent dialogue and descriptions, Petterson (OUT STEALING HORSES) succeeds in creating stark images of the unforgiving Scandinavian landscape as well as evoking the terrible, terrifying silence in the infinite spaces between human beings. This novel is a prequel to Petterson’s 2000 work, IN THE WAKE. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2010]