My usual qualms with a less than perfect translation. The story is engaging, the characters are very well-written. Would have gladly seen more of the mother's back story unravel, but the very fact that we can only learn about her through the reminiscences and observances of her son is intriguing. ( )

(6.5)This book is bleak in setting and context. Set in November in Denmark and Norway, 37 year old Arvid Jansen, is not only confronting his impending divorce, but also his mother's diagnosis with stomach cancer. When his mother receives the news she decides to take a break from her family and return to their summer house in Denmark, the land of her birth. Arvid immediately pursues her. The story moves back and forth between different time zones (which is not well done in my opinion, as I struggled to orientate myself each time.) I thought many events in the story were left without clarity, the cause of his brother's death, the reason behind his marriage breakdown... I read this over 24 hours but felt no emotional reaction to it. I wondered whether there was an autobiographical element to it and whether the author himself was in a very negative head space when he wrote it. ( )

In common with other reviewers I found this novel less satisfying than Out Stealing Horses. Set in 1989, Arvid is 37 years old and his mother has been diagnosed with cancer. His relationship with his mother is central to the novel and this is difficult and he is not confident that his mother cares for him. Arvid is not able to articulate his feelings and turns to alcohol and sometimes violence to overcome this. His mother is disappointed in him for leaving college and working in a factory, as requested by the communist party. He feels he is not a very able communist party member as he does not manage to recruit from the workforce but he is pleased that he is good at his job in the factory and seems to get some satisfaction from his job. The narrative flits between 1989 and the past and there we meet a girlfriend who is still at school and is very young and I became uncomfortable with this relationship, the reader is given no idea where this ended, it may have been in his marriage, that was now ending in divorce or not. It is a sad novel set in the cold of November in Norway and Denmark. ( )

It was difficult at first to give myself into Petterson's simple rhythms. The story is mostly backstory, and he meanders about his memories and his past life in ways that sometimes seem irrelevant. But his wonderful poetic prose -- the "dementing lures" described by James Wood in his recent New Yorker review (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/12/10/121210crat_atlarge_wood) -- kept rescuing me from my impatience.
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In a shortish narrative that jumps around in time, Per Petterson relays the story of Arvid, a man in his mid-thirties who cannot get along with his mother. Emotions stay buried deeply in this story, and only surface when Arvid behaves badly.

We witness as Arvid, still in his teens, announces to his mother that he’s leaving college to join the worldwide proletariat as a member of the Communist Party. She slaps him. He travels to a lake with his girlfriend, and while they have fun, we don’t see her any more after this episode. And he hears the news that his mother is terminally ill, but can’t find the love inside required to be anything but a pest, forcing himself into her company as she travels from Oslo to Denmark to visit a home from long ago.

There isn’t much to recommend Arvid, and very likely this is the point. We get this first-person portrait of a very unsympathetic character; his desires and approach to life are rather childish; his wife is divorcing him, and there are mysterious occurrences in the past concerning a couple of his brothers. This strikes as an example of viewing the world from the eyes of a problem child, a troublesome employee, an adult man who in some ways has failed to launch. It’s effective in that way, but the string that should pull this narrative taut and lift it off the surface in my view stays slack and accomplishes nothing.

Per Petterson is admired for his other work, and I have probably latched on to something lesser here.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2016/01/i-curse-river-of-time-by-per-petterso... ( )