I was surprised that I did not find this novel very interesting. The reviews called it "beautifully enlightening" and "a novel of the highest caliber." Perhaps it needs a second reading for a full understanding. It is a fast read. I am also surprised because Petterson's later book, "Out Stealing Horses," is one of my favorite books of all time. ( )

About [In the Wake], it has kind of a chaotic beginning in that the main character, Arvid, is pounding on the door of a bookstore that is not open and in which it later turns out that he has not worked in three years. He has busted ribs and a black eye and really doesn't remember how it happened. The next scene is later, in his house, after his ribs have been bandaged. Then there is a conversation with his brother on the phone, and flashbacks about a trip he took with his older brother to the flat and then the cabin of his parents, which happened after his parents and two younger brothers died in a ferry boat fire that happened in 1990. In between the flashbacks, a Kurdish neighbor who speaks only a few words of English is locked out of his apartment with his family, and wakes him in the middle of the night to let him in. This neighbor has also experienced something distressing, but we never learn what it is, we only see his distress in a lit up room at night through the window as Arvid does. And we witness the two of them, Arvid and the Kurd, together, when the Kurd brings a gift to thank him for the middle of the night, and in one later encounter, in which they are able to share and commisserate without the use of language. We learn that Arvid is divorced during the conversation with his brother, which happens in the middle of the night, and also by references that he makes to his daughters moving out of his flat.

The first 80 pages, which also includes the attempted suicide of his brother and Arvid, after visiting his brother in the hospital, falling asleep and nearly freezing to death, seemed to me to be in the spirit of the title of the book - In the Wake - or in the turbulence of something that has motored through your life and left a wake behind. In addition to the scenes I've mentioned, and other scenes, mostly remembered, involving his family, he also recounts many of his dreams, which also include members of his family.

In the 120 pages that follow the tone changes for me. It is not that he wakes up and takes things in hand, more that he allows other experiences to touch him that are not the aftermath of the tragedy. The first of these experiences stem from his falling asleep outside, then making it back half-frozen to his flat, and discovering that he does not have his keys. He thinks of waking the Kurd, but that would wake the whole family. He finally settles on a neighbor, a woman he has seen in the store but doesn't know, but her light is on. This encounter, which is awkward as any encounter with a stranger in the middle of the night would be, in which he ends up telling her a story about him and his father, is one of my favorite in the book. The other is later, when he spends a few hours with his daughter.

This book was actually written after, [To Siberia], though translated into English earlier. Both the books were written after the ferry boat fire, a real life even in which Per Petterson's father, mother, one brother and a neice died. Besides that event, the parents of the novel are based on his actual parents. But the novel diverges from his real life in how Arvid of the novel reacts, and in what happens after. As I read about this, I discovered that the main character of To Siberia was also a fictionalized account of the life of his mother beginning with some things that he knew - how she felt about her brother, for instance - and imagining from there. A version of his father also appears in the earlier novel in an encounter with his mother - but they do not marry in that novel. I will want to reread To Siberia with that in mind. [Out Stealing Horses], in contrast, is not based upon anything autobiographical, but arose out of a desire to show a relationship between father and son in which it was clear that the two loved each other.

I am not sure I would rate this book as highly as the other two, which I read first, but I am halfway through rereading it which I felt I wanted to do to get it straight in my mind and go back to the beginning, which I hadn't quite assimilated the first time through. I would definitely recommend it though. ( )

I felt compelled to keep going with this book, partly because of the desire to find out the what had happened to Arvid and his brother to make them both so dysfunctional, but also because of much of the writing - at times quite beautiful. But in the end it didn't work for me. I found the main character annoying and felt at times that it "lost something in the translation". Then again, I might not have been in "the mood" for such a book. You will see from other reviews that it was highly praised. ( )

Long sentences, hard to follow. About man who is mourning the tragic death of his family on a boat fire. ( )