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I Curse the River of Time

by Per Petterson, Charlotte Barslund (Translator)

3.29 of 5 stars 3.29 · rating details · 1,323 ratings · 300 reviews

“How impossible it was to grasp that in the end something as fine as this could be ground into dust” (p. 213).

I Curse the River of Time, the new novel from the winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Out Stealing Horses, is a mesmerizingly beautiful book about love, regret, family secrets and failed revolution.

The novel takes us through thirty-seven-year-old Arvid’s life and its descent towards a moment of terrible crisis. It traces his parents’ hesitant support when he gives up his place at college to work in a paper mill, like his father; his experiences as a fervent young Maoist in Norway in the 1960s; the death of his younger brother; the passionate, enveloping romance that led to marriage and children and, for a time, happiness; the failure of that relationship, and its transformation into a source of harrowing pain.

By 1989, everything that gave Arvid’s life meaning has melted into air. The collapse of the Berlin Wall mirrors the collapse of his marriage and his self-punishing alcoholism. When his mother is diagnosed with stomach cancer, Arvid sets off to their summer house in Denmark to be with her, meeting men and women from their past along the way. His despairing journey is also a quest for some kind of order in his life, perhaps even a new foundation. When Arvid finds his mother, and accompanies her in her illness, the novel turns to exploring the secrets that explain the distance between them – a distance that perhaps can never be crossed.

I Curse the River of Time describes the ways that the present and the past are always intertwined, and shows how the personal and political are one and the same. Written in a subdued and elegiac style, with flashes of devastating poetic beauty, it is an utterly absorbing experience, a book that displays wisdom of the kind that only profound loss can bring. Above all, it is a reminder of the power of great art to console us for life’s burdens, an example of the way our dreams may brighten our bleakest moments.

From the Hardcover edition.(less)

Paperback, 240 pages

Published July 1st 2010 by Harvill Secker (first published 2008)

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May 05, 2013 Tanuj Solanki rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 21-century, e-book, favorites, nordic

Per se, a long-living Per will, say, win the Nobel

I came to this after reading James Wood's article on Per Petterson's novels, in which Wood receives this novel with a particular benevolence that is beyond criticism, and very close to the region of awe.

Though Wood doesn't mention it, but a similar awe that he holds for W.G. Sebald might have played its minor role. For according to me, Petterson's voice is very Sebaldesque. Though if Petterson is a Sebald, he is definitely a different kind of Seb...more Per se, a long-living Per will, say, win the Nobel

I came to this after reading James Wood's article on Per Petterson's novels, in which Wood receives this novel with a particular benevolence that is beyond criticism, and very close to the region of awe.

Though Wood doesn't mention it, but a similar awe that he holds for W.G. Sebald might have played its minor role. For according to me, Petterson's voice is very Sebaldesque. Though if Petterson is a Sebald, he is definitely a different kind of Sebald. A more personal, more private Sebald. A Sebald not concerned with History's catastrophic losses (history with an 'H') in themselves, but with the here-and-now afterimages of a family's history and its intermingling with History as a faint, external force.

But perhaps by making this forced likeness with the German great I'm suggesting an unoriginality in Petterson. That's not true. Petterson is as original a writer you'll ever read. He might be -- if it can somehow not be considered foolish jest emanating from having read just one exceptional work -- the best European writer alive.

'I curse...' is foremost the story of a mother-son relationship. Arvid Jensen, 37, facing an imminent divorce, is second in four brothers. One of the brother died six years back from an unspecified death. Now the mother might be dying of cancer. Her oncoming death rekindles a desire in her, to run away from the home in suburban Oslo to Frederikshaven in north-Eastern Denmark, where the family has a summer house. Perhaps she is doing this to retrace some past one last time. The son follows her there, himself running away from a brutal present. It is winter time in the summer house.

Petterson recreates this action in the voice of the 37 year old Arvid, in a series of measured chapters that collude present action with episodes from the past. The episodes are recalled in a flourish that remembers particular gestures and trifle details but is tacit regarding the feelings. Arvid recalls interactions with his mother, and recalls the working class environment of his family, his turning into a Communist and a worker at the cost of leaving college (a decision that angered his mother and is one of the major plot points in the novel without feeling like one). He recalls his absence at brother's death, pitted against his volunteering to have a neighbour's dog put down. And other such...Among all these recollection are invoked films, songs, novels, cigarette brands, liquor brands, the names of places - as if they are somehow stores for our memories rather than the other way around. This quite remarkable reflexivity is achieved with ease, with a simplicity that hides the complex work it requires.

The novel could be entirely this evocation and it wouldn't hurt at all. But there is more to it, more emotional intensity, though anything revealed here will be a spoiler now. All I should say is that it is an extraordinary story, told in extraordinary poetry, with subtle technical inventions, and supported by heaps of formal novelistic rigour. Where trickster's novels leave us gawking at their cleverness, those written by masters like Petterson take us with them, by holding our hands, to the places of their imaginations (although wintery Scanidnavia is not a pleasant place to be), and we feel compassion more than conscious envy.(less)

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Mar 07, 2013 Bettie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: translation, norway, winter-20122013, tbr-busting-2013, published-2008, families, slit-yer-wrists-gloomy, lifestyles-deathstyles, midlife-crisis, plague-disease, bettie-s-law-of-excitement-lost, next

Translated by Charlotte Barslund.

Discarded from London Borough of Lewisham Library.

Opening: All this happened quite a few years ago.

#57 TBR Busting 2013

Didn't like this navel-gazing much at all.

Next!!

5* Out Stealing Horses
4* To Siberia
4* In the Wake
2* It's Fine By Me
2* I Curse the River of Time

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Sep 02, 2010 Jeanette rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-fiction, scandinavia

Amazon blurble:

"It is 1989: Communism is crumbling, and Arvid Jansen, thirty-seven, is facing his first divorce. At the same time, his mother gets diagnosed with cancer. Over a few intense autumn days, we follow Arvid as he struggles to find a new footing in his life while all the established patterns around him are changing at staggering speed. I Curse the River of Time is an honest, heartbreaking yet humorous portrayal of a complicated mother-son relationship told in Per Petterson’s precise an...more

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Dec 10, 2010 Jill rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It’s difficult to compare Per Petterson with anyone except Per Petterson. His writing is always exquisite and precise and heartbreaking and spare. In Out Stealing Horses and To Siberia, each word is used as a brick, building one upon the other, and not one brick is out of place.

Per Petterson’s craftsmanship is on display here, as it has been in his prior novels. Alas, this one, which is explores the relationship between a mother and a son, is more static and sluggish than his other works. Still,...more It’s difficult to compare Per Petterson with anyone except Per Petterson. His writing is always exquisite and precise and heartbreaking and spare. In Out Stealing Horses and To Siberia, each word is used as a brick, building one upon the other, and not one brick is out of place.

Per Petterson’s craftsmanship is on display here, as it has been in his prior novels. Alas, this one, which is explores the relationship between a mother and a son, is more static and sluggish than his other works. Still, Petterson at his less-than-best is still better than most writers at the height of their powers.

Arvid Jansen is 37 and life hasn’t turned out exactly as it should. He has plundered the promise of a higher education to become part of the proletariat; he has embraced Communism and now the “party of the people” has unraveled and the Berlin wall is coming down His wife of 15 years is filing for divorce. And his mother – his beautiful, aloof, and strong mother – has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Arvid follows his mother to Norway where he reflects on his childhood, his flirtation with Communism, his birth family, and the women who have flitted through his life. Of his mother, he reflects, “I became the Lone Ranger, looking for unsafe ground, and I clung to her did tricks for her, performed for her, pulled laughter out of her with my silly jokes whose punchlines were lost in linguistic confusion…”

Indeed, Arvid feels like he has disappointed his mother. In one of the more poignant scenes, his memory captures a time when his mother turned 50 and he prepared to give a toast. Drunk, out of his league, he bungles the moment and humiliates himself. He wants to say, “The good news, Mother, is the river had dried up…only a trickle remains so now it is easy to cross…so you see, nothing’s too late for us, we can walk right across or meet halfway.” What he DOES say is far different.

Much of this book deals with the chasms between us, the rivers of time that don’t let us cross and connect. The river-as-time metaphor captures how Arvid is caught in the flow of life, sometimes turbulent, that has upturned his life and now may do the same to his two daughters. And, much like a river, the narrative ebbs and flows, becomes bogged down, bursts free in spurts, and meanders to its destination.

Eventually, Arvid realizes that “…you suddenly realize that very chance of being the person you really wanted to be is gone forever, and the one you were is the one that those around you will remember.” In this, he is like everyman – sorting through regrets, trying to define who he really is, attempting to make peace (if only in his memories) with who he is and has been.

The novel’s title is taken from a poem by Chairman Mao whom Arvid idolized in his Communist days; maturity and eventual mortality are themes that run throughout the book. This novel of ideas requires concentration and total immersion in the mind of Arvid; much of the action is internal and distanced. It will appeal to some, but not all, of Per Petterson’s fans.

(less)

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Jun 16, 2010 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, translations

I Curse The River Of Time has a lot in common with Per Petterson's other novels: a narrator fairly unmoored and adrift, digging through memories to make sense of how the past has arrived at the present. This time, that back-and-forth between past and present isn't limited to a specific series of memories, but rather a number of memories from various times in the narrator's life, which makes for a somewhat jumpier flow between scenes but makes the character's mental chaos more tangible (it's most...more I Curse The River Of Time has a lot in common with Per Petterson's other novels: a narrator fairly unmoored and adrift, digging through memories to make sense of how the past has arrived at the present. This time, that back-and-forth between past and present isn't limited to a specific series of memories, but rather a number of memories from various times in the narrator's life, which makes for a somewhat jumpier flow between scenes but makes the character's mental chaos more tangible (it's most similar to In The Wake, in that sense).

Protagonist Arvid has hitched himself to failures in both his political and personal lives, and at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 finds himself questioning all the choices that delivered him where he is -- almost divorced, losing his mother, caught between social classes, a committed if ineffective Communist when it no longer matters, and not quite an adult at 37 (most of which is clear in the opening pages, so I shouldn't be spoiling anything there). He's discovering, if not quite accepting, that there's a point in life when it's no longer possible to become a different version of yourself than the one you already are, which resonates with the issues of working class politics and "escape" through literature and learning that are at the core of Arvid's relationships and tenuous identity. The ease with which Petterson weaves together the political and personal lets a story full of "big ideas" avoid being didactic or oppressive, but I think that's also helped by the fact that as much as Arvid defines himself by his Party affiliation, most of his active Communism happens in the margins. As does much of his life, because he seems to be perpetually arriving at the wrong time, insisting on going where he's not wanted, and proving his own existence by making others confirm it when there's no way to ignore him. Who Arvid _thinks_ he is, or _wants_ himself to be, then, isn't really who he is to anyone else -- and it's those moments when we see Arvid as others might that he really becomes complex as a character.

Unlike Petterson's other narrators, though, who are sympathetic in their flaws and mistakes, Arvid seems a bit static and even a little pathetic: he's got the same problems in the present he had in the past, and doesn't seem particularly troubled by that as he still looks for someone else (his mother, mostly) to fix things for him. All he really seems to want is for nothing to change, whether it's the stasis of social class or the preservation of his marriage or avoiding the mortality of his mother. He has a habit of closing his eyes, childlike, to avoid the unpleasant, and daydreams of falling into blackholes to avoid what he'd rather not face. In fact, Arvid's mother was the more interesting character -- she's the center of his universe, and the center of the novel, too, because unlike her son she has made difficult choices and has lived with them bravely. And though it takes a bit of awkward authorial "cheating" to get there, the gradual revelation of how she views her own son was, for me, the most crucial, powerful thread. So ultimately, while the questions the novel asks and explores are compelling, and as engrossed as I was, at times I wished to get out of Arvid's head in a way I haven't with Petterson's other protagonists. But I don't mean that to sound accidental: all along, and especially in the flashes of perspective from other characters, the Arvid's one-dimensional narration seemed intentional and controlled, and I trusted the author, so that frustration never made me want to _stop_ reading but instead added another layer to engage.(less)

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May 02, 2013 Albena Shkodrova rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-and-wouldn-t-mind-rereading-be

It is cold at the beginning, and winds blow all through, rain falls, fingers, ears, water freeze, the pavement is wet, there are graveyards, factory fields, deserted northern beaches. The more you advance, the colder it gets. People, relations, lives fall apart, and at the end the cold is so severe, it is hardly bearable. It is so bad, that, as the main character would say, you almost enjoy it.
Very melancholic, without being openly sentimental, prose.
Dark, sad, northern. I liked it. Beautiful pi...more

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Oct 11, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nov-dec-2010

Described as "a master at writing the spaces between people" (Los Angeles Times), Petterson skillfully entwines past and present to create a vivid, heartrending portrait of a son's bungling, but sincere, love for his cold, unresponsive mother. Critics roundly praised Petterson's poetic language and unwavering rejection of sentimentality. Instead, he evokes a lovely sense of melancholy, movingly echoed in stark descriptions of the lonely Scandinavian landscape. Not all critics agreed, however, th...more

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Jan 02, 2013 Sam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

4.5 stars.

My last read of 2012 - bleeding over slightly into the new year - and a fine one to end with, both because the prose was a welcome corrective to some of the overwritten and fussy business I was practicing in my own work and because of the novel's preoccupation with the passage of years: the way in which people try to situate themselves in relation to life, in the hopes of stabilizing themselves, only to have time continually erase these relationships. (Hence the title, also a quote fro...more 4.5 stars.

My last read of 2012 - bleeding over slightly into the new year - and a fine one to end with, both because the prose was a welcome corrective to some of the overwritten and fussy business I was practicing in my own work and because of the novel's preoccupation with the passage of years: the way in which people try to situate themselves in relation to life, in the hopes of stabilizing themselves, only to have time continually erase these relationships. (Hence the title, also a quote from Mao - more about the politics of late-period European communism later.)

By "life," in this context, I mean people and places (often very specific geographies), and the way they interrelate. What's so fascinating about Petterson's prose style is that it enacts this particular interrelation, or at least seeks to do so - its sentences often seem to be trying to expand outward in order to encompass some greater degree of time-space context, as in the following example:

"And then she did not die. She lived on and had two more sons, and I do not know how it was resolved, if the diagnosis was wrong or a successful operation was performed that I was not told about, or whether she was simply worn out by the twilight life with all those men behind the blinds on the second floor, and the weight started to drop off her and that the life she was leading was making her ill. You cannot rule that out, because shortly after we moved from this place, from the flat on the corner of Smalenstaga and Varlerenggata, where those damn tramlines ran, and up to the new and more affordable housing at Veitvet, which was completed that year, or at least our terraced house was, and my father came with us, but he only, and within a short time she felt much better and almost looked like her old self."

Here we have the family's movement from one working-class housing complex to another, a mediation on the mother's sickness, and the insistent sense of the narrator working out what he does and does not know about these interpersonal and geographic relationships - and what makes it particularly effective is that this meditation on context is continual; the above is only the last paragraph in a particularly thick section about the narrator's mother's first bout with cancer, every sentence of which is packed with this sort of space-time association. Dense stuff, but immensely rewarding. Prime quotable paragraphs every page.

Certainly not a particularly plot-based narrative - perhaps not even a novel? - but there are so many bizarre and fascinating episodes (main character punches his childhood friend on a ferry, narrator cuts down a pine tree, narrator and girlfriend go boating through a river crusted with ice) that the book never feels overly essayistic. As in Proust (similar chronological preoccupations) the sentences pack so much information that they sometimes come across as essayistic, but the episodic action - as well as the harsh but often very funny dialogic relationship between Arvid and his mother, who is a wonderful character - keeps things from dragging.

All of this might seem a little cold or boring if it weren't for the perverse and often very funny perspective of the narrative voice. Arvid is a prime self-pitier, with just enough awareness of his own foolish instincts to make the tone float, unburdened by bitterness. He's always haranguing himself and then forgiving himself, whining about himself and then whining about how he's always whining at himself, and if you've got a sense of fondness towards hopeless cases (as I do!) you'll find him deeply charming. The narrator's early flirtations with Maoism (through his working-class background and factory job) are presented clear-headedly, without malice towards his younger self but with a full understanding of his doomed, selfish intentions. Loving, but pitiless - like Arvid's mother. Really, everything about class is handled so well, and brings home how rare it is to read a book that's actually about class issues; not in a polemic way, but the way in which economic conditions affect how one views geography and time.

Another wonderful passage:

"My school was down on Ostre Aker Vei, bu Grorud railway station and the star shaped blocks, as they were known, where the railway workers lived; train driver, ticket collectors, engineers, but before I got as far as that I turned right at the junction with the Trondhjemsveien where the football club was and the grass pitch and on past the church and the cemetery and zigzagged downhill before making a final detour past Heimdal, the red building where the young Christians came together on evenings like this, where I had tried to pass through the eye of a needle, but was turned away, by myself, halfway up the stairs every single time because of my lack of faith."

To read this book closely is to understand the way that the narrator's childhood sense of how place mattered - his realization that a bad apartment stuffed with family could drive his mother towards sickness - has colored his sense of how geography influences human relationships throughout his life, and how this intermingles with class associations: those "star shaped blocks" where the railway workers live, the geographic basis of class consciousness.

The only part of the book that seems less than earned is the thread which concerns Arvid's dead brother, who never seems to take on form as a character, and yet who is expected to carry great emotional weight. Feels believable, considering the narrator's consistent self-obsession, but it still seemed like a strange and continual empty repetition, like somebody in the distance frantically waving, too far to be recognized.(less)

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Oct 19, 2012 Harry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist and this book is translated from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund. 'I Curse the River of Time' is a world away from the novels of Steig Larsson and anyone with experience of life, relationships and loss, be that of love, or of a loved one, will readily identify with the characters, and what they experience. It is a dark tragicomedy, as cold and dour as the Scandinavian landscapes of it's setting. It 's main character is Arvid Jansen, of whom Petterson has wri...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Judith rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a great title. It rivals his other book: "Out Stealing Horses". Unfortunately, I felt like cursing the river of Petterson's whiny digressive meandering narrative in this book. I know the Scandinavian authors cannot allow any light to slip into their books, lest thy be accused of frivolity, but OMG, you may need a handful of uppers to get through this book.

Arvid's mother is dying of stomach cancer and Arvid is getting dumped by his wife. He takes his two young daughters for outings which co...more What a great title. It rivals his other book: "Out Stealing Horses". Unfortunately, I felt like cursing the river of Petterson's whiny digressive meandering narrative in this book. I know the Scandinavian authors cannot allow any light to slip into their books, lest thy be accused of frivolity, but OMG, you may need a handful of uppers to get through this book.

Arvid's mother is dying of stomach cancer and Arvid is getting dumped by his wife. He takes his two young daughters for outings which consist of driving around hairpin curves in a borrowed car while discussing black holes. As Arvid's mother prepares to die by smoking and drinking and visiting their summer beach cabin, Arvid recalls the many golden moments of bonding they shared. He remembers fondly her calling him an idiot; striking him across the face; leaving him in a tea shop in a fury; visiting the hospital where his brother was dying years earlier; taking the family dog to the vet's to be put down because they were tired of it. Ah yes, those were the days.

Arvid's contemplation of his relationship with his father is much more straightforward, but still yawn-worthy. ( ahem):

" I did not want to look like him. I did not want to look in the mirror and see my father there. But from early on I realised that the day would come when everyone could see how much I resembled my father. It would separate me from my mother for good. Even though the two of them were married. And shared a life. But that was not how I saw it. That they shared a life. And it would tie me to my father for good because I looked like him and perhaps thought like he did, and against my will would find myself on the other side of the great divide, the great chasm where he lived in the murky twilight among the crammed furniture, where his father was with his Adolf in the middle, and his brothers, who were my uncles, a small crowd of gloomy men standing shoulder to shoulder nailed to a place where my mother did not belong, because she was different from them, because she had been carried away to this place and so in some strange way was free." (less)

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Dec 30, 2011 Dirk rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel is the reminiscence of a man looking back on his life at a time when he is facing an imminent divorce and the mortal illness of his mother, with whom he has had an intense but cold relationship. It is one of those Scandinavian novels that turn on declarations unspoken and feelings unacted. The title, which is a line from a poem by Mao Zedong, suggests the pervading bitterness. While his novel Out Chasing Horses, better known so far in the US, is of rural, life in the mountains of Norw...more

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Aug 30, 2011 Melissa rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, library

I wasn't sure if I was going to write a review of this one, because ... well, it really wasn't the book for me.

I Curse the River of Time is the story of 37 year old Arvid Jansen, who is going through a divorce and whose mother has been diagnosed with cancer. After coming from the doctor and receiving her diagnosis, she abruptly leaves the family home in Oslo and boards a ferry for her native Denmark. She's headed for the family's summer house on the coast and Arvid decides to follow her.

Arvid...more I wasn't sure if I was going to write a review of this one, because ... well, it really wasn't the book for me.

I Curse the River of Time is the story of 37 year old Arvid Jansen, who is going through a divorce and whose mother has been diagnosed with cancer. After coming from the doctor and receiving her diagnosis, she abruptly leaves the family home in Oslo and boards a ferry for her native Denmark. She's headed for the family's summer house on the coast and Arvid decides to follow her.

Arvid and his mother have a bit of an estranged relationship. He left behind his college education (which his mother had worked hard to provide for him) in order to work in a factory and to uphold the principles of Communism, of which Arvid was a supporter. (Much of the story takes place in 1989.)

The story is told from Arvid's perspective. It's one where he is reflecting on his life and the decisions made, and in so doing, I Curse the River of Time becomes a rambling sort of story. (I seem to be in a pattern of choosing non-linear, reflecting on one's life types of books lately, which generally is fine with me ... when they work well.) But in this case, I just found myself bored and impatient. This came really close to being a DNF for me, but I was listening on audio and had gotten further in the story than I expected after one of my drives, so I decided to continue. Even though I felt a little sympathy for him (we can all relate to experiencing regret and wishing back time gone by), I didn't much like Arvid and I kind of wanted him out of my car sooner rather than later.

Ultimately, this book left me sad (and freezing, because Arvil seems to be constantly cold - and complaining about such - and there are lots of descriptions of the weather in Norway and Denmark being rather chilly too).

In perusing other reviews, I noticed that several people said this is a very different book than Petterson's Out Stealing Horses. Even though I was disappointed I Curse the River of Time, I'll probably give Petterson another chance with another one of his works. (less)

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Jul 26, 2011 Ian Young added it · review of another edition

The title of this book is taken from a poem by Chairman Mao, and it is as stark and bleak a piece of fiction as I have read for a long time. The central protagonist is a middle-aged man whose life is disintegrating. He is on the brink of a divorce, his mother has just discovered that she is dying of cancer and he is losing the belief system by which he has lived his life over the preceding 20 years. The year is 1989, and the Berlin Wall is falling. The setting for the book alternates between Osl...more

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Sep 22, 2010 Carl rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A weak 3 stars: Underwhelming, disappointing, but perhaps I had high expectations after enjoying Out Stealing Horses. I found the jumps from present to various past times to be disjointed. The characters weren't well developed, although perhaps the mother came through clearest--but why she (even temporarily?) set off without her husband was not at all clear. Why the main character embraced Communism, and any deep thoughts he should have had about its downfall never came across (other than he was...more

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Aug 08, 2010 Kathleen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved Out Stealing Horses - love, love, loved it - and would have rushed right out to read everything Petterson has ever written, if only I could read Norwegian. I didn't know I Curse the River of Time was even out until my husband gave it to me for our anniversary, and I dove right in.

Right away, I was filled with a sense of foreboding. It is dark, deep, powerful, and I couldn't put it down, even though it was profoundly unsettling. It is the story of a thirty-something man reeling from his i...more

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Aug 04, 2010 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I Curse the River of Time is Per Petterson’s newest title, and it feels different from his previous novels. For one thing, there is a different feel to the words, almost a jagged and sharp edge to the prose. While Out Stealing Horses was almost dreamlike in its beauty and simplicity, this has more of an abrupt edge to it. That became apparent to me in reading portions of it aloud (a cranky baby was resisting sleep) and the words felt chunky and awkward, the sentences long and meandering. Given t...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Kristine Brancolini rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I absolutely loved I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson. I couldn't figure out why the writing was so much more accomplished in this book than in Petterson's latest book It's Fine by Me, which was just published. It's because It's Fine by Me was actually published in Norwegian in 1992. All is revealed!

I Curse the River of Time begins in 1989, when protagonist Arvid Jansen has just learned that his 15-year marriage is over and that his mother has stomach cancer. Arvid is also a Communist g...more I absolutely loved I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson. I couldn't figure out why the writing was so much more accomplished in this book than in Petterson's latest book It's Fine by Me, which was just published. It's because It's Fine by Me was actually published in Norwegian in 1992. All is revealed!

I Curse the River of Time begins in 1989, when protagonist Arvid Jansen has just learned that his 15-year marriage is over and that his mother has stomach cancer. Arvid is also a Communist grappling with the fall of the Berlin Wall. All in all, a very unsettling time in the life of 37-year-old Arvid. Beginning in 1989, Arvid's thoughts move freely over his past, moving quickly -- almost from paragraph to paragraph -- from his youth in the early in the early 1970's to his childhood. And back again. Two women are central figures: his mother and the young woman whom I assume became his now-estranged wife, both unnamed in the book. As the mother of two young adult sons, I can scarcely fathom the way Arvid relates to his mother. At 37 he is strangely needy and childish. He is devastated by the collapse of his marriage and his mother's illness.

The treatment of Arvid's wife is especially strange. He meets her when he dropped out of university and began working at a printing plant. He saw this beautiful young girl at the train station every day. He soon learns that she is living in an abusive household; one day he looks in the window of her house and sees her mother "punch her in the face because she put on the wrong coat" (p. 132). The young girl, who is still in school -- maybe 16 or 17 -- eventually spends most of her time in Arvid's apartment. Never quite moving in completely but almost. Petterson never explicitly says that Arvid marries the girl, but it seems pretty clear this young girl became the woman who now wants out of their marriage. Early in the book he remembers "...when there were just the two of us against the world, just she and I, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, there is just you and me, we said to each other, just you and me, we said" (p.27). This phrase, just you and me is repeated later in the book with regard to the young girl (p. 133). But by 1989, it's over: "It was all so clear to see. She did not like me any more. She did not want me" (p. 28).

Arvid's relationship with his mother seems to have been somewhat unsatisfying to him from his earliest childhood. His mother had a child out of wedlock before Arvid was born. She married Arvid's father to give her older son a father. Although Arvid and his mother seem to have been close when he was a child, she shares a special bond with Arvid's older brother: "Wherever she went my brother went too, the eldest, for he was the unwanted child, a child born in secrecy and shame off the coast of Denmark... She had travelled there in haste with my brother like a shimmering fish in her belly, and it bound them to each other with an ease that did not embrace me" (p. 109-110). But Arvid is the one who pursues his mother to Denmark, where she has retreated after learning that she has cancer. He seems to trying to repair the damage their relationship suffered when he dropped out of university around age 20. She cannot understand why he is hell-bent on living out the life of a blue-collar worker. She worked in a chocolate factory most of her life and wanted a different future for Arvid. He seems surprised by her reaction to the news he has dropped out of university. He wants to recapture their previous closeness. For her 50th birthday Arvid writes a speech, which predictably he fails to give, comparing their relationship to the Rio Grande, saying "...the good news, Mother, is that the river has dried up...only a trickle remains so now it is easy to cross..so you see, nothing's too late for us, we can walk right across or meet halfway and only get our feet a little we, and that's not a big deal, is it?" (p. 137-138).

The beauty of this book lies in the language and in Petterson's writing style. He writes insanely long and exquisite sentences, run-on sentences, and fragments, reflecting Arvid's state of mind. Sometimes it's unclear exactly what is happening, but that is Arvid's reality. He is off-kilter and trying to cope with the loss of his marriage; he cannot lose his mother at the same time. And yet it is likely that he will. Petterson takes the reader inside Arvid's mind. We know he is weak but so are we and it breaks your heart. (less)

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Sep 08, 2010 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm disappointed in myself for putting this book down, but I just couldn't get into it -- even after reading about a third of it. I remember loving Per Petterson's "Out Stealing Horses," which I read when Ava was about six months old. According to my brief Goodreads review, here's what I thought of that book:

> 5 Stars. Unassuming, but aches with deep emotion. Beautiful prose. More for readers of Ian McEwan than
> those of Khaled Hosseini.

Needless to say, when I discovered a couple of days...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Ursula rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scandinavian

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 'I curse the river of time' by Per Petterson

1989 is not a good year for Arvid, the novel's 37-year old main character: his wife wants a divorce, his mother has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Communism, the belief system he has built his identity on, is well and truly crumbling.

When his mother leaves Oslo to travel back to her Danish hometown to bring some personal matters in order, Arvid promptly follows her - uninvited - on the next ferry.

Arvid i...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Laurie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

A very pensive read. The narrator, Arvid, who seems unutterably depressed, describes a relatively circumscribed number of incidents of his life, and yet he seems completely honest emotionally, without actually putting his emotions into words. He simply lays bare the person he was, and the person he is, without embarrassment, conveying his neediness and his uncertainty over what really prompted him to do the things he did.

Like one of the readers whose comments I looked at, I recognized myself in...more

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May 20, 2011 THE rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It is difficult not to be disappointed with Per Petterson's new novel, I CURSE THE RIVER OF TIME, after savoring the incandescent prose, magical memories, and rich historical vistas that reverberated throughout his previous OUT STEALING HORSES (2007). The primary character in his earlier book was a 67-year-old widower reflecting on a long life that encompassed World War II and Nazi occupation of Norway as well as a traumatic childhood tragedy with profound effects. Petterson's current work revea...more It is difficult not to be disappointed with Per Petterson's new novel, I CURSE THE RIVER OF TIME, after savoring the incandescent prose, magical memories, and rich historical vistas that reverberated throughout his previous OUT STEALING HORSES (2007). The primary character in his earlier book was a 67-year-old widower reflecting on a long life that encompassed World War II and Nazi occupation of Norway as well as a traumatic childhood tragedy with profound effects. Petterson's current work reveals the much smaller and confined world of Arvid Jansen, a gloomy Norwegian facing a failing marriage and trying to reconnect with his beloved, but (emotionally) distant mother who has just discovered she has a fatal illness. The stage is set largely in a melancholic Danish summer house devoid of the grand world events that informed his earlier novel.

Stylistically, Petterson's writing is immediately recognizable with his narrator's descriptions, ruminations, and intution always evident as are the author's clever manipulation of time as he maneuvers skillfully through past and present. However, in this work, there is a claustrophobic setting that only emphasizes the ambiguity of Arvid's problems, specifically his strained relationship to his mother. The reader can never quite grasp what has happened or why. While such mysteries are indeed an aspect of "art reflecting life," the details provided offer few hints about Arvid's tangled past or painful present. Even the obscure poem by Mao (from which the book's title is derived) only dimly illuminates his earlier leftist politics or relationship to a dead sibling (for which his mother may perhaps hold Arvid culpable). For all of his intropection, Arvid is a displaced person who stumbles onto the stage of life with almost comic pratfalls that reveal his awkward and unreliable qualities. In spite of our enjoyment of vivid descriptions of wintry landscapes, interest in potentially appealing characters (Elly, a former girlfriend, and Hansen, a wise old neighbor), or curiosity about peculiar events (such as a drunken birthday party or Arvid's violent attack on a stranger), the reader must ponder whether Arvid's quest is simply his personal Kafkaesque trial. Near the closure of the novel, he poses an existential judgment for those facing death: "you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember." For like Joseph K., in the end, we always arrive in the place we were expected.(less)

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Nov 14, 2011 Bryan Burley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Per petterson does an incredible job at capturing the melancholy, and tying it in the nostalgic in a way that nostalgia needs when you think of something in your past, in one sense the longing for what has been and in the same brushing it over with your own colors and time, and reliving the pain and losses, as well as successes and experiences, in a long reverberating way knowing the past won't be back again.

This all comes strongly through as he remembers the 3 things that will be leaving him,...more

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Feb 16, 2011 Corny rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Things seem to be going downhill for this author after Out Stealing Horses, which was a truly great novel. In this book, Petterson again explores the mother-son relationship but I was unable to empathize with the pathetic Arvid, who has made nothing of his life, despite apparent intelligence. Much is left unsaid in this novel, which shifts back in forth in time so much that the device becomes an annoyance. The title, we are told early on, comes from a quote by Mao in which he laments the movemen...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Lida rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I Curse the River of Time is a line in a poem by Chairman Mao, which is quoted in the book through the narration about the main character, Arvid, who is a Norwegian communist. I hadn't realized how fitting the title was until the end, when it is clear that Arvid is capable of little effective action (I don't consider cursing unstoppable forces effective action). He is definitely swept away by the current and is waiting for someone or something to act on him. This is most likely better, mind you,...more

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Jan 13, 2012 Christy Birdsong rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist who has numerous awards for his books and short stories, but received the most notable acclaim for his book, Out Stealing Horses, which I highly recommend.

The protagonist of I Curse the River of Time, Arvid, is reflecting back on a period of his life where his marriage was dissolving and his mother had just been diagnosed with stomach cancer, against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a recounting of a generalized feeling of dissolution, loss...more Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist who has numerous awards for his books and short stories, but received the most notable acclaim for his book, Out Stealing Horses, which I highly recommend.

The protagonist of I Curse the River of Time, Arvid, is reflecting back on a period of his life where his marriage was dissolving and his mother had just been diagnosed with stomach cancer, against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a recounting of a generalized feeling of dissolution, loss, disconnectedness rather than a resolution of those experiences; it is as if he is reliving the experiences rather than making sense of them. Petterson's use of language reminds me a bit of Hemingway (though he is mostly compared to Raymond Carver)- he is direct, concise, almost surgical in his use of description. Unlike Hemingway, his sentences convey deep emotion, which is devastating considering the topics here.

Arvid is a lost boy, one of four sons in his family who always felt overlooked and struggled to connect with his distant mother. Although the mother may be characterized as aloof, she is an admirable character: blue collar and hard working, an intellectual and voracious reader, independent, and impatient with her son's naivete.

I Curse the River of Time is a line from a poem written by Chairman Mao which is particularly meaningful to Arvid, as a member of the communist party, but also captures his own frustration with pthe advance of time, and how he feels left out of it, surprised and the last to know that relationships, people, places have changed. At the end of the book, Arvid still seems befuddled as to how he got to this place in life, disconnected from his wife and mother. Time has not healed his wounds or provided clarity.

The language is beautiful, the story poignant; but I was left with so many unanswered questions, I am tempted to reread this short book to see what more I can pick up the second time around. That's maybe what Arvid was trying to do in his recounting this low point of his life.(less)

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Apr 01, 2013 Amanda Trosten-bloom rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ugh.

This book was beautifully reviewed, and I DIDN'T LIKE IT. I can't decide whether I had a reaction to a character that was so magnificently rendered that I had to hate him, or whether it was just not Petterson's best. (I LOVED "Out Stealing Horses"...)

This is a morose, self-absorbed reflection on loss. The principal character is a 37 year old man who, while going through a divorce, is also watching the Berlin Wall fall and saying goodbye to his terminally ill mother. He spends the whole time...more

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Oct 10, 2011 Janet rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: norwegian

The Norwegian version of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." Spare and inscrutable.

A couple passages that stood out for me:

"She thought she knew who I was, but she did not..... She did not pay attention, she turned her gaze to other things. She saw me come in and didn't know where I had been, she saw me go out and didn't know where I was heading, how adrift I was, how sixteen I was without her, how seventeen, how eighteen..."

"...but when it came to dying, I was scared. Not of being dead, that I coul...more

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Apr 02, 2011 Jessie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

An important writer for me. Seems like I can only speak of his books in terms of the felt experience of reading them: his sentences so long and full of the sensory and the stuff that lies beyond the moral—I mean stuff as it is and not as it should or should not be—I well up with the as-is moments of my own life that I couldn’t change if I wanted to, but I don’t want to, right then in that moment of finishing his novel; I’m left wanting to smoke a cigarette I roll myself (because all the characte...more

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Sep 06, 2010 Jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This book was a bit of a struggle to enjoy, although it was also full of moments of great sensitivity and intimacy. The central character is a young man who goes around in a bit of a fog, not quite grown-up in that way that makes it hard to experience your life. And the readers is in that fog with him. His mother, the other major character, is a well-drawn character with considerably more clarity and self-awareness.

In the end, this story is an exceptionally well-told and empathetic story of a ma...more

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Jun 20, 2010 Ryan Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

This book was the first I had heard of Per Petterson, much less read of him, but I can honestly say it has very quickly turned me into a fan, and I look forward to reading more.

Petterson's overall tone as well as his more complex stylistic tweaks shone through to me despite the book being a translation, a point deserving of much appreciation as the style to me is what really lets this novel come across as something with tremendous emotional resonance and staying power.

I've heard Petterson's pro...more This book was the first I had heard of Per Petterson, much less read of him, but I can honestly say it has very quickly turned me into a fan, and I look forward to reading more.

Petterson's overall tone as well as his more complex stylistic tweaks shone through to me despite the book being a translation, a point deserving of much appreciation as the style to me is what really lets this novel come across as something with tremendous emotional resonance and staying power.

I've heard Petterson's prose described as 'spare', and while I want to agree with that I feel inclined to describe it more specifically as 'emotionally spare'; this has nothing to do with the emotions perhaps described in some way or in the emotions almost certainly felt by the reader (true for this reader, at least), but 'spare' in the sense that I never felt Petterson was trying or even wanted to be trying to browbeat be into feeling a certain way. Sure the story given and which sub-stories we're given point us a certain direction, this is far from a feel-good novel, but these complex emotions come about through this text not by brute force but with a subtle finesse. I've noted the importance of this style because it's coupled with a story that is so full of sadness and loneliness that it'd have been terribly easy to let melodrama reign supreme, providing a story so overdone it's essentially cliche. But the spareness, the temporal shifts and other well-worked mechanisms keep the narrative almost cruelly restrained, leaving this reader feeling as far away and lonely as poor Arvid.

Speaking of our narrator, Arvid seems as far away from the events around him as the reader. His divorce, his failed socio-political aspirations, his dying mother and otherwise distant and non-existent family--Arvid seems to grasp this distance as well and works the entire novel to overcome it, seeming desperate at all turns to not necessarily find his way back to any so-called halcyon days, but to at least bridge the gap long enough to share in something meaningful with his mother before her imminent death, even while she seems to be to be looking for her own final moments in another direction, truly as distant from Arvid as he feels from her.

Petterson's descriptions and overall narrative movements do exactly what they need do: keep things moving and stitched together without detracting from the characters and their vastly complex emotions and interactions. This is key as it's these complexities, never resolved nicely, that fill the novel beginning to end and make it such a beautifully troubling novel to finish. I don't believe it spoils anything to say that Petterson is a writer uninterested in happy endings and all their simplistic, annoying facades.

I received this book via the Goodreads First Reads program.
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About Per Petterson

Petterson knew from the age of 18 that he wanted to be a writer, but didn't embark on this career for many years - his debut book, the short story collection Aske i munnen, sand i skoa, (Ashes in the Mouth, Sand in the Shoes) was published 17 years later, when Petterson was 35. Previously he had worked for years in a factory as an unskilled labourer, as his parents had done before him, and had als...more

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Quotes from I Curse the River of Time

“...when it came to dying, I was scared. Not of being dead, that I could not comprehend, to be nothing was impossible to grasp and therefore really nothing to be scared of, but the dying itself I could comprehend, the very instant when you know that now comes what you have always feared, and you suddenly realise that every chance of being the person you really wanted to be, is gone for ever, and the one you were, is the one those around you will remember.” — 6 people liked it

“But what I found out that summer . . . was that I could swallow whatever hit me and let it sink as if nothing had happened. So I mimicked a game that meant nothing to me now, I was going through the motions, and then it looked as if what I was doing had a purpose, but it did not.” — 4 people liked it

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