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Arvid Jansen #4
I Curse the River of Time
“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.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2008
About the author
Per Petterson
25 books851 followersPetterson 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 also trained as a librarian, and worked as a bookseller.
In 1990, the year following the publication of his first novel, Pettersen's family was struck by tragedy - his mother, father, brother and nephew were killed in a fire onboard a ferry.
His third novel Til Sibir (To Siberia) was nominated for The Nordic Council's Literature Prize, and his fourth novel I kjølvannet (In the Wake), which is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990, won the Brage Prize for 2000.
His breakthrough, however, was Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses) which was awarded two top literary prizes in Norway - the The Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Booksellers’ Best Book of the Year Award.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/perpet...
In 1990, the year following the publication of his first novel, Pettersen's family was struck by tragedy - his mother, father, brother and nephew were killed in a fire onboard a ferry.
His third novel Til Sibir (To Siberia) was nominated for The Nordic Council's Literature Prize, and his fourth novel I kjølvannet (In the Wake), which is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990, won the Brage Prize for 2000.
His breakthrough, however, was Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses) which was awarded two top literary prizes in Norway - the The Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Booksellers’ Best Book of the Year Award.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/perpet...
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April 17, 2018
Fragile images of departure, the village back then.
I curse the river of time; thirty-two years have passed.
Arvid Jansen, the narrator of the novel, is occupied with own failures. Disappointed with youthful ideas, embittered with marriage that is on the rocks, and to cap it all off he just learnt about mother’s illness and her unexpected journey to native Denmark, to their summer house. On strange impulse Arvid follows her and by the way for a moment escapes own troubles, and the whole novel is a quiet examination of these threads.
I curse the river of time is a understated and low-keyed novel. It’s fragmented, at times even disjointed. I’m strangely attracted by the writers who can render more substance with silence than dozens words, who leave something to read between the lines, who make the reader to use own sensitivity to capture the essence and imagination to fill in the blank spaces and hear unsaid words. And Per Petterson seems to be such a writer.
In the youth Arvid was a believer in communist system, he even dropped studying to become a common worker to his mother’s great dissatisfaction. But now, it’s 1989, the world order is changing, The Berlin Wall is crumbling and after Tiananmen Square Massacre Arvid can only allow himself on empty gestures to protest under the Chinese Ambassy. Arvid is a sensitive man but what more strikes us is his lassitude and incapacity to face life. From his disorderly and blurry memories slowly emerges an image of an extremely lonely and defeated man. Chagrined at juvenescent dreams, unfulfilled, neither in love nor in work, unable to establish a closer relationship with any family member or friend has to face the truth when 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.
At age 37, he seems immature and unable to accept anything that life had offered him. There was a woman he had once affection for, and a friend who now can only give him a knuckle sandwich. There was a dying brother and there are also other brothers. There were one summer holidays and there are his daughters. But everything and everyone equally distant from Arvid as he himself is detached from life. We can see Arvid who got drunk on the fiftieth birthday of his mother unable to say any word about her, Arvid who is alike his father though he would prefer to have strong personality of his mother. It is a great bitterness, a sense of lost time and unrealized chances. There is finally Arvid who can only paraphrase the words of Mao’s poem and curse the passage of time and thirty something years of emptiness and futile attempts. Existential crisis goes hand in hand with nearly childish desire to be noticed, appreciated, loved. But do not we all curse the river of time at some point in our lives? Don’t we all have sometimes that moment of clarity when it dawns to us what we have done with our lives ?
I was a man out of time, or my character had a flaw, a crack in its foundation that would grow wider with each year.
The novel emanates with melancholia and sadness, the ambience is almost elegiac, enhanced by the harsh still beautiful Nordic scenery, and the emotional coldness additionally highlighted by the late-autumn aura.
3.5/5
April 17, 2018
“I curse the river of time” is an intimate story, almost told in a whisper, of a life that is slowly but steadily crumbling down. Arvid is thirty-seven years old and he is facing a multiple crisis that pins him against the ropes of his past choices: his communist ideals are proving to be utopic, his marriage is on the verge of collapsing, and his mother, with whom he has always had a strained relationship, is dying of cancer.
From the threshold of a hazy present, an era of loss and defeat engulfs Arvid in the swirling waters of the river of time, which can’t be stopped or contained, while he desperately chases fragmented memories of his childhood and younger days when he still had a chance at being the man he was supposed to be, the man he had meant to be and is not.
The timeline of the narrative is also radically fragmented, it moves in circles like Arvid’s growing disquiet at realizing that his life is slipping through his fingers. The only presence, or absence, that remains constant throughout the story is Arvid’s mother, whom he revolves around. The stern, unsentimental Dane who has lived in Norway for forty years, always a kind of an outcast, uprooted from her inner and outer world, and who is disappointed in her son, has been for decades.
Amidst Arvid’s personal shipwreck, he decides to travel with his mother to Denmark in a desperate attempt to salvage what is left of their fragile relationship, hoping to gain distance from his own failures as a husband and as a son.
Per Petterson’s trademark is recognizable from the opening pages of this contemplative novel. Lyrical but steely, implacably sad. His unhurried but precise prose navigates the turbulent waters of human relationships and the inability to communicate with those we most care about. The characters remain close in a physical space, but they couldn’t be farther apart. Unuttered words can be read in the silences, in the grey, muffled light that filters through the dense clouds that cover Petterson’s Nordic landscapes, words that wait and don’t despair despite the pressing weight of the characters’ limitations. Limitations that are also mine…and probably yours.
From the threshold of a hazy present, an era of loss and defeat engulfs Arvid in the swirling waters of the river of time, which can’t be stopped or contained, while he desperately chases fragmented memories of his childhood and younger days when he still had a chance at being the man he was supposed to be, the man he had meant to be and is not.
The timeline of the narrative is also radically fragmented, it moves in circles like Arvid’s growing disquiet at realizing that his life is slipping through his fingers. The only presence, or absence, that remains constant throughout the story is Arvid’s mother, whom he revolves around. The stern, unsentimental Dane who has lived in Norway for forty years, always a kind of an outcast, uprooted from her inner and outer world, and who is disappointed in her son, has been for decades.
Amidst Arvid’s personal shipwreck, he decides to travel with his mother to Denmark in a desperate attempt to salvage what is left of their fragile relationship, hoping to gain distance from his own failures as a husband and as a son.
Per Petterson’s trademark is recognizable from the opening pages of this contemplative novel. Lyrical but steely, implacably sad. His unhurried but precise prose navigates the turbulent waters of human relationships and the inability to communicate with those we most care about. The characters remain close in a physical space, but they couldn’t be farther apart. Unuttered words can be read in the silences, in the grey, muffled light that filters through the dense clouds that cover Petterson’s Nordic landscapes, words that wait and don’t despair despite the pressing weight of the characters’ limitations. Limitations that are also mine…and probably yours.
June 10, 2025
He sido incapaz de empaparme de la tristeza y el desamparo que desprende Arvid, el protagonista de esta conmovedora (aunque no para mí) historia. ¿Debo preocuparme? ¿Soy ya un caso perdido para según qué novelas? No entiendo por qué el abatimiento que sufre Arvid no me ha ni rozado, no he sentido nada ante la falta (o pérdida) de vínculo emocional con las personas más importantes de su vida y su doloroso sentimiento de haber decepcionado a todo el mundo incluido él mismo. Desconozco los motivos y no puedo (o no sé) achacarlo a nada concreto, ni a su fragmentaria estructura, ni a su tono íntimo y confidencial, ni a su estilo claro y sencillo. No sé, ¿debo preocuparme?
Bah, mejor ocuparme con otra novela que me haga tilín.
February 2, 2024
Fragile images of departure, the village back then.
I curse the river of time; thirty-two years have passed.
Mao Tse-Tung
Recycle Books in San Jose is a cheerful little place, brightly lit and stacked floor-to-ceiling with used books spread across several rooms. The wooden floors creak when you walk on them, you generally have to squeeze past other readers on your way to where you’re going, and a handful of cats wander around like they own the place. Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses had amassed a twinkling basket of stars from my GR friends and I was hoping I could find it here. I didn’t, but I found this volume instead.
“Oh, I loved that book,” volunteered the clerk as he saw me walking past with it. “As long as you don’t like too much cheerfulness and joy in your reading.”
He wasn’t kidding. This was an excellent and gripping story, but don’t read this if you’re looking for sunbeams and clover.
* * * *
Last year, I read another excellent and gripping story called Berlin, by Bea Setton. That story was a couple hundred pages of first-person narrative of a young woman becoming unravelled. It was interesting to me to find a male version of a similar setup, though their stories are quite different. While dysfunctional women may spend days their apartment without bathing or eating properly, men tend to fall apart on boats, in the woods and in bars.
You could be forgiven for thinking this is a book about a Norwegian named Arvid, as he narrates about 230 of the 233 pages of this novel. Near the end, we hear directly from Arvid’s mother for a couple of pages, and this reminds us that the story is really about her. Her life has been challenging, but challenging in a way that many of us can relate to. Bearing and raising five children (all boys, in her case) has a way of distracting her from some of her own goals, and in this book, she is struggling mightily to reflect on some of the choices she’s made in her life.
The problem is that Arvid, age 37, is still a needy child and constantly interrupting her. A more sensitive kid might see that Mom needs some alone time, but Arvid, among other problems, appears blind to the plight of his mother (and to a large extent, other people.) You can only get away with this tendency for so long, and he is finding himself increasingly shut out from people he once was close to.
* * * *
I was pleased at the settings of this book, which are roughly split between Olso and northern Denmark, a place so well captured in Dorte Nors standout A Line in the World. My own impression of the area is that it’s really unfit for human habitation for much of the year; so cold, such knife-like winds, so bleak. The author does not disagree, and makes this palpable throughout. And in order for love to go sour, love must start out sweet, and he describes both flavors with equal, incisive skill.
In one of my friends’ reviews of Out Stealing Horses, they noted that Petterson doesn’t write like anyone else. But what I was reminded of while reading this was W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, a book that kept getting distracted by all the interesting stuff the author knew. In that book, Sebald refused to confront his real topic head-on because the worst aspects of human nature were too awful to contemplate. Again and again, Sebald brought us to the edge of the abyss and turned back.
The narrator in this case is eager to explore his main topic, but lacks the ability to do so. The book ends up sounding a lot like Sebald, but for completely different reasons. In this book, life rolls on whether the narrator understands it or not, and unlike Sebald, we have a much clearer idea of what’s going on than the main character does. This is not an easy effect to achieve, and it sits on the reader like a bad case of heartburn. The central mystery here isn’t what’s going to happen – we figure that out pretty early – but rather whether Arvid will ever emerge from the fog.
I curse the river of time; thirty-two years have passed.
Mao Tse-Tung
Recycle Books in San Jose is a cheerful little place, brightly lit and stacked floor-to-ceiling with used books spread across several rooms. The wooden floors creak when you walk on them, you generally have to squeeze past other readers on your way to where you’re going, and a handful of cats wander around like they own the place. Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses had amassed a twinkling basket of stars from my GR friends and I was hoping I could find it here. I didn’t, but I found this volume instead.
“Oh, I loved that book,” volunteered the clerk as he saw me walking past with it. “As long as you don’t like too much cheerfulness and joy in your reading.”
He wasn’t kidding. This was an excellent and gripping story, but don’t read this if you’re looking for sunbeams and clover.
* * * *
Last year, I read another excellent and gripping story called Berlin, by Bea Setton. That story was a couple hundred pages of first-person narrative of a young woman becoming unravelled. It was interesting to me to find a male version of a similar setup, though their stories are quite different. While dysfunctional women may spend days their apartment without bathing or eating properly, men tend to fall apart on boats, in the woods and in bars.
You could be forgiven for thinking this is a book about a Norwegian named Arvid, as he narrates about 230 of the 233 pages of this novel. Near the end, we hear directly from Arvid’s mother for a couple of pages, and this reminds us that the story is really about her. Her life has been challenging, but challenging in a way that many of us can relate to. Bearing and raising five children (all boys, in her case) has a way of distracting her from some of her own goals, and in this book, she is struggling mightily to reflect on some of the choices she’s made in her life.
The problem is that Arvid, age 37, is still a needy child and constantly interrupting her. A more sensitive kid might see that Mom needs some alone time, but Arvid, among other problems, appears blind to the plight of his mother (and to a large extent, other people.) You can only get away with this tendency for so long, and he is finding himself increasingly shut out from people he once was close to.
* * * *
I was pleased at the settings of this book, which are roughly split between Olso and northern Denmark, a place so well captured in Dorte Nors standout A Line in the World. My own impression of the area is that it’s really unfit for human habitation for much of the year; so cold, such knife-like winds, so bleak. The author does not disagree, and makes this palpable throughout. And in order for love to go sour, love must start out sweet, and he describes both flavors with equal, incisive skill.
In one of my friends’ reviews of Out Stealing Horses, they noted that Petterson doesn’t write like anyone else. But what I was reminded of while reading this was W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, a book that kept getting distracted by all the interesting stuff the author knew. In that book, Sebald refused to confront his real topic head-on because the worst aspects of human nature were too awful to contemplate. Again and again, Sebald brought us to the edge of the abyss and turned back.
The narrator in this case is eager to explore his main topic, but lacks the ability to do so. The book ends up sounding a lot like Sebald, but for completely different reasons. In this book, life rolls on whether the narrator understands it or not, and unlike Sebald, we have a much clearer idea of what’s going on than the main character does. This is not an easy effect to achieve, and it sits on the reader like a bad case of heartburn. The central mystery here isn’t what’s going to happen – we figure that out pretty early – but rather whether Arvid will ever emerge from the fog.
November 7, 2017
But something had happened, nothing hung together anymore, all things had spaces, had distances between them, like satellites, attracted to and pushed away, at the same instant, and it would take immense willpower to cross those spaces, those distances, much more than I had available, much more than I had the courage to use.
A reader follows Petterson's deliberate prose and reaches layers of profundity tucked away in a coat of simplicity. Darkness is cloaked by the gleam of stars; beauty covers gloom. Somewhere at the heart of the story, is the shape of a life lived reluctantly, a life lived with regret. This is a novel structured after a man's reflections on life, just as he is forced to face death. His mother is dying of cancer and he realizes he has never truly felt her love. He is about to be divorced from his wife and although one never learns the real reason, one figures out through subtleties, through the melancholy that seeps from his thoughts.
The word unfolded in all its majesty, back in time, forward in time, history was one long river and we were all borne along that river. People all over the world had the same yearnings, the same dreams and stood hand in hand in one great circle aroudn the globe.
It's hard to imagine newly-published books with the poignancy that moves through these pages, like enjambment in poetry; hard to imagine busy employees taking a moment to savor these words. The world is so accelerated and caffeine-induced, but sometimes a story like this one complements a hasty environment, where the sound of the pages turning in a good book is rare. The serene setting of this novel matches its serene structure, matches its thought-provoking sentences.
A reader follows Petterson's deliberate prose and reaches layers of profundity tucked away in a coat of simplicity. Darkness is cloaked by the gleam of stars; beauty covers gloom. Somewhere at the heart of the story, is the shape of a life lived reluctantly, a life lived with regret. This is a novel structured after a man's reflections on life, just as he is forced to face death. His mother is dying of cancer and he realizes he has never truly felt her love. He is about to be divorced from his wife and although one never learns the real reason, one figures out through subtleties, through the melancholy that seeps from his thoughts.
The word unfolded in all its majesty, back in time, forward in time, history was one long river and we were all borne along that river. People all over the world had the same yearnings, the same dreams and stood hand in hand in one great circle aroudn the globe.
It's hard to imagine newly-published books with the poignancy that moves through these pages, like enjambment in poetry; hard to imagine busy employees taking a moment to savor these words. The world is so accelerated and caffeine-induced, but sometimes a story like this one complements a hasty environment, where the sound of the pages turning in a good book is rare. The serene setting of this novel matches its serene structure, matches its thought-provoking sentences.
November 13, 2019
I love how this author takes me to spaces with such a gentle touch. One hardly notices when he sets the main thread aside and and smoothly detours to another time and place. Somehow he consistently maintains the narrative as before you know it you’ve returned to where you once were. A man learns that his mother is dying. He goes to her, from Oslo, to the summer cabin of her youth in Denmark. It is here they will try to find peace and a way to say fare thee well. This is a story that can grip your insides and remind you of times like this in your life. Yet it is told with such an in depth recognition of how we humans at times stumble through life and death that one closes the book feeling understood and soothed.
January 14, 2020
Ah Nordikler ve onların nefes almak, su içmek gibi gündelik olaylarmışçasına anlattıkları acıları. Çocukluğuma, geçmişe, eski evimize doğru soğuk bir kazı yapmış gibi oluyorum her İskandinav edebiyatı okuyuşumda.
Galiba ben de, Arvid'in annesi gibi, senelerce başka bir yerde yaşasa da "evime gidiyorum" dediğinde orayı değil, geçmişteki bir evi, unutamadığı bir yeri kast eden insanlardan olacağım.
Galiba ben de, Arvid'in annesi gibi, senelerce başka bir yerde yaşasa da "evime gidiyorum" dediğinde orayı değil, geçmişteki bir evi, unutamadığı bir yeri kast eden insanlardan olacağım.
July 6, 2016
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.
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.
February 8, 2020
'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 his brothers 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 her 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 mesh present action with episodes from the past. The latter are recalled in a flourish that remembers particular gestures and trifle details but is generally reticent about the feelings therein. 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). He recalls his absence at his brother's death, pitted against his volunteering to have a neighbour's dog put down. 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 manoeuvres, and supported by heaps of formal novelistic rigour.
Petterson recreates this action in the voice of the 37 year old Arvid in a series of measured chapters that mesh present action with episodes from the past. The latter are recalled in a flourish that remembers particular gestures and trifle details but is generally reticent about the feelings therein. 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). He recalls his absence at his brother's death, pitted against his volunteering to have a neighbour's dog put down. 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 manoeuvres, and supported by heaps of formal novelistic rigour.
July 14, 2021
‘Dünya bütün görkemiyle yayılıyordu, zamanda geriye, zamanda ileriye, tarih uzun bir nehirdi ve hepimiz onun bir parçasıydık. Bütün ülkelerdeki bütün insanların benzer özlemleri vardı, benzer rüyaları ve dünyanın çevresinde el ele koca bir halka oluşturmuşlardı.’
.
Arvid boşanmak üzere, bununla birlikte annesinin hasta olduğunu öğreniyor. Oldukça iç karartan bir girişi yaptım değil mi? Ama durun daha bitmedi: Arvid’in tüm bunların dışında başka sorunları da var.
Geçmişte aldığı kararlar, geleceğe dair umutlarının renginin giderek pastelleşmesi gibi.
Arvid 37 yaşında koca bir adam. İçindeki çocuğu öldürmüş değil ama içinde bir şeylerin öldüğü kesin. Parça parça anlıyor bunu.
Parçalanarak kavrıyor.
Buz gibi bir havada, eldivenimiz de yokken dinliyoruz hikayesini. Annesini, büyüme sürecini, fabrikadaki mesailerini. Havadan çok soğutuyor bakışları.
Evlerden ırak demiyoruz yaşadıklarına, hanelerimize ne kadar yakın biliyoruz.
.
Lanet Olsun Zaman Nehrine hem yalnızlığın hem de çokluğun romanı. Petterson’un okuduğum üçüncü eseri olmakla birlikte, bana en çok dokunanıydı bu (Reddediyorum adlı kitabını da yakın zamanda okuyacağım).
Çok sakin bir anlatımı var diğer eserlerinde olduğu gibi. Acıları süslemiyor hiç, ‘bırak dağınık kalsın’ diyor sanki. Zamanda atlamalar yapıyor örneğin, bir düne gidiyor bir yirmi sene evveline.
Büyütmüyor Petterson hayal kırıklıklarını. Tarif etmiyor da içinize akmasını sağlıyor yaşananları. Arvid siz oluyorsunuz, annenizin gözlerinin içine bakıyorsunuz biraz sevgi için, ellerinizi yokluyor nasırlarınıza dokunuyorsunuz.
Hissediyorsunuz. Petterson bunu yapıyor.
.
Delicesine akmıyor bu nehir, kurumuş kolları da var. Eğer siz de bu durgunluğu benim gibi seviyor-sahipleniyorsanız lütfen bu kitabı okuyun.
.
Aslı Biçen çevirisi, Emine Bora kapak tasarımıyla ~
.
Arvid boşanmak üzere, bununla birlikte annesinin hasta olduğunu öğreniyor. Oldukça iç karartan bir girişi yaptım değil mi? Ama durun daha bitmedi: Arvid’in tüm bunların dışında başka sorunları da var.
Geçmişte aldığı kararlar, geleceğe dair umutlarının renginin giderek pastelleşmesi gibi.
Arvid 37 yaşında koca bir adam. İçindeki çocuğu öldürmüş değil ama içinde bir şeylerin öldüğü kesin. Parça parça anlıyor bunu.
Parçalanarak kavrıyor.
Buz gibi bir havada, eldivenimiz de yokken dinliyoruz hikayesini. Annesini, büyüme sürecini, fabrikadaki mesailerini. Havadan çok soğutuyor bakışları.
Evlerden ırak demiyoruz yaşadıklarına, hanelerimize ne kadar yakın biliyoruz.
.
Lanet Olsun Zaman Nehrine hem yalnızlığın hem de çokluğun romanı. Petterson’un okuduğum üçüncü eseri olmakla birlikte, bana en çok dokunanıydı bu (Reddediyorum adlı kitabını da yakın zamanda okuyacağım).
Çok sakin bir anlatımı var diğer eserlerinde olduğu gibi. Acıları süslemiyor hiç, ‘bırak dağınık kalsın’ diyor sanki. Zamanda atlamalar yapıyor örneğin, bir düne gidiyor bir yirmi sene evveline.
Büyütmüyor Petterson hayal kırıklıklarını. Tarif etmiyor da içinize akmasını sağlıyor yaşananları. Arvid siz oluyorsunuz, annenizin gözlerinin içine bakıyorsunuz biraz sevgi için, ellerinizi yokluyor nasırlarınıza dokunuyorsunuz.
Hissediyorsunuz. Petterson bunu yapıyor.
.
Delicesine akmıyor bu nehir, kurumuş kolları da var. Eğer siz de bu durgunluğu benim gibi seviyor-sahipleniyorsanız lütfen bu kitabı okuyun.
.
Aslı Biçen çevirisi, Emine Bora kapak tasarımıyla ~
November 17, 2020
Mide kanseri teşhisi konan Arvid’in annesi memleketine gitmek için yaşadığı yerden ayrılıyor ve Arvid onu takip ediyor, hem de bütün hayatının belirsizliği ile. Üstüne üstlük boşanmak üzereyken. Annesini teselli etmek hatta iyileşmesi için desteklemek istiyor ama onu da memleketinde bekleyen yüzleşmesi gereken sorunlar açığa çıkıyor.
Zaman nehrinin lanetli su görüntülerinde aslında ikisi de sürükleniyor. Tahmin edileceği gibi romanın içinden geçen derin bir keder var. Bir an için bu kederin üstesinden gelmeye çalışan Arvid, erkek kardeşinin yanından uzaklaşıp hastanenin penceresinden dışarı bakar. Hastane binasının bir köşesinde koşan, oynayan bu kadar trajedinin ortasında hayatına devam eden bir çocuk görür. Arvid o çocuğu küçük kardeşi olduğunu ve koşarken kendi hayatından da kaçtığını düşünür. Beni en çok etkileyen bölüm buydu.
Sonuç olarak okurken kendinizi nehrin akışına bırakın.
Zaman nehrinin lanetli su görüntülerinde aslında ikisi de sürükleniyor. Tahmin edileceği gibi romanın içinden geçen derin bir keder var. Bir an için bu kederin üstesinden gelmeye çalışan Arvid, erkek kardeşinin yanından uzaklaşıp hastanenin penceresinden dışarı bakar. Hastane binasının bir köşesinde koşan, oynayan bu kadar trajedinin ortasında hayatına devam eden bir çocuk görür. Arvid o çocuğu küçük kardeşi olduğunu ve koşarken kendi hayatından da kaçtığını düşünür. Beni en çok etkileyen bölüm buydu.
Sonuç olarak okurken kendinizi nehrin akışına bırakın.
September 5, 2012
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."
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."
June 8, 2017
Önceki iki romanı gibi çok sardı bu romanı da, Per Peterson geleceğin Nobel adayı bence.
July 9, 2015
But something had happened, nothing hung together any more, all things had spaces, had distances between them, like satellites, attracted to and pushed away at the same instant, and it would take immense willpower to cross those spaces, those distances, much more than I had available, much more than I had the courage to use.
In I Curse the River of Time, from some unidentified future year, Arvid Jansen looks back at November of 1989 – a month that saw the confluence of three major personal upheavals for him – and as Arvid dips in and out of the events of that time, he also remembers and shares other, pivotal life events. The result is a meandering and affecting portrait of a man in existential crisis; a 37-year-old man-child, desperate to cling on to his mother's skirts even as she's diagnosed with cancer and attempts to complete her own life's business.
The title of this book comes from a poem written by Mao Zedong, a passage here translated as:
Fragile images of departure, the village back then.
I curse the river of time; thirty-two years have passed.
Arvid was a militant Marxist, even causing a rift between his mother and himself when he decided to drop out of college to join the peuple at a factory job; a job just like the ones his parents both toiled at and hoped their son could avoid through education. With a picture of Chairman Mao hung proudly above his sofa between Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, Arvid thought that Mao's poetry captured his own essence, as interpreted by this passage:
(T)ime without warning could catch up with me and run around beneath my skin like tiny electric shocks and I could not stop them, no matter how much I tried. And when they let up at last and everything fell quiet, I was already a different person than I had been before, and it sometimes made me despair.
It was very interesting to me, therefore, to read in this article that the poem above is considered a poor translation, and the passage more properly says:
Like a dim dream recalled, I curse the long-fled past -
My native soil two and thirty years gone by.
The difference between cursing the passing of time and cursing the past itself is apparently crucial (according to this article's writer, André Alexis; a perceptive author whom I admire) to understanding both Mao and Arvid, leading to the conclusion: As a result, Arvid isn't so much an unreliable narrator as he is a bewildered one. Bewildered pretty much captures it. The meandering and unfocussed nature of the reminiscences are mirrored in the frequently long and jam-packed sentences:
My father’s brothers with their wives did call on rare occasions and every other Christmas my mother’s childless sister came up from Copenhagen acting upper class with her husband who worked in a firm importing French cars and was the creepy owner of an 8mm camera he used for all kinds of things, and my grandparents would also come, their palms worn and hard, from another, more puritanical town in the same country, in the same fashion, by ferry, grey hair, grey clothes, standing windswept and grey on the quay waiting for my father to come down along Trondhjemsveien in a rare taxi to pick them up and sometimes I, too, was in that taxi and they looked so small next to their big suitcases.
As Arvid skips from present to past (all written in the future), I was often amused to notice him writing omnisciently about his mother's narrative – describing her thoughts and actions for times when he was not present and couldn't possibly have that level of detail about – and then always inserting himself into these passages by sharing his own feelings or judgements. At its core, I Curse the River of Time is about Arvid's attempt to get closer to his mother, even as he can't bring himself to say the words he wants to say; to invoke the titular river again, Arvid imagines the gulf between himself and his mother as the uncrossable Rio Grande (and in a blackly comedic reminiscence, he once tried to explain that to her – a long time ago – with disastrous results). It's uncomfortable to watch Arvid try to approach his mother – to be inside his agonised head – and to see him acting like a child and falling into the frigid water and getting into barroom fights and needing to have his fares and hotel rooms paid for, and know his mother doesn't want him there; didn't need to have him follow her from Norway to Denmark without an invitation. Arvid was the only one of four sons to look like their father (which he resented as a further distancing from the their mother), the only child who had been wanted and planned for (which he resented, again, as distancing), and in all of his memories, he had the most special connection with his mother: the one who shared with her a love of literature and films (even if in the end he was just forgetting when another brother would be present at the cinema with them); the one who would sneak out of bed after their father left for work in the morning in order to have alone time with Mom. Despite spending a lifetime reaching out, Arvid believes:
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 16 I was without her, how 17, how 18.
As a result, he's a man who never grew up, even now facing a divorce from a woman who was shockingly younger than Arvid when they first got together – and I suppose the inference is that she eventually did grow up; outgrew a husband who squeezes his eyes shut in order to avoid having a hard conversation with her. In a nice parallel scene, the book ends with Arvid watching his mother watch the ocean from her knees on a freezing Danish beach:
I lay like this for a few moments to see if she would stand up, but she didn't. I crawled back and leaned against the mound, squeezed my eyes shut and tried to concentrate. I was searching for something very important, a very special thing, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not find it. I pulled some straws from a cluster of marram grass and put them in my mouth and started chewing. They were hard and sharp and cut my tongue, and I took more, a fistful, and stuffed them in my mouth and chewed them while I sat there, waiting for my mother to stand up and come to me.
Don't you just want to smack Arvid and tell him to grow up already? I Curse the River of Time is literature as art, and as such it may not be for all tastes, but I found it to be brutal and honest and emotional and just so very, very well crafted. Author Per Petterson is a master (which I should have remembered since I loved Out Stealing Horses once upon a time) and I'll be moving him up on my list of authors to devour.
November 5, 2025
Excelentă carte! Excelentă traducerea!
Snobilimea citește “noi apariții” și ignoră vesel romane ca acesta! Zuleiha. Cilka. Circe. Stepanova. Morton. Lecturi de pisici! Pussy literatură.
Oroarea, pentru protagonistul Arvid, era aceea de a le semăna câtuși de puțin părinților săi - altfel, oameni “normali”, nici pe departe abuzivi, dar probabil un pic neatenți afectiv, un pic prea absorbiți de sine, ca atâția alți părinți de pe Terra (care prin atitudinea asta self-absorbed fut pe veci destinele copiilor lor).
Pentru “a se deosebi” de ei, Arvid ar fi săvârșit orice act ieșit din comun, inclusiv - intuiesc - aceea de a se fi lăsat omorât, dacă i s-ar fi ivit “oportunitatea”.
Până acolo, însă, se putea mulțumi cu abandonarea cursurilor universitare, falimentul personal, eșecul asumat în iubire, cvasi-mizeria locativă, traiul de pe azi pe mâine (ca muncitor maoist, obiect al derâderii din partea celorlalți “tovarăși”, care nu luau comunismul atât de în serios - nici n-aveai cum, într-un occident prosper de prin 1989, vremea când odiosul Zid al Berlinului cădea stârnind un norișor de praf în conștiințele cam încărcate ale intelectualilor europeni).
O peliculă destul de opacă de iluzoriu & defetism i se așezase, cu voia lui Arvid, peste felul cum ochii săi vedeau lumea.
Pentru noi evident autodistructiv, antieroul ăsta își lasă viața să-l trăiască și să-l poarte de colo-colo, în derivă. Aparent, fără un rost anume.
Aș spune că romanul de față este echivalentul izbitor de reușit (literar) al unei opere de psihologie despre deficiențele (și consecințele dramatice ale) transferului afectiv (defectuos) părinte - copil.
Cu certitudine v-ați confruntat cu întrebarea prostuță, dar foarte “populară”: ce i-o mai fi lipsit (cutărui copil, apucat pe cărări greșite), ai lui i-au dat de toate; “numai ei știu ce sacrificii au făcut” să nu-i lipsească nimic! Nu trebuie să fii nici detectiv, nici terapeut faimos ca să ghicești (să știi) ce i-a lipsit: dragostea i-a lipsit = să simtă că-i centrul atenției părintești.
Când asiguri odraslei “de toate” (materiale, educaționale), dar tu însuți (ca adult) rătăcești în infinitele-ți tribulațiil conjugale sau în hățișul egolatriei, al disperatei tinereți de-a doua, n-ar trebui să aștepți să culegi numai roade fără viermi...
Dar cartea nu-i (numai) despre asta. E despre un copil “întârziat”, prins în trupul unui adult de 37 de ani, confruntat cu pierderea din nou, acum ireparabilă, a unui părinte.
Cu certitudine, v-ați confruntat cu întrebarea prostuță, dar foarte “populară”: ce i-o mai fi lipsit (cutărui copil, apucat pe cărări greșite), ai lui i-au dat de toate; numai ei știu ce sacrificii au făcut să nu-i lipsească nimic! Nu trebuie să fii nici detectiv, nici terapeut faimos ca să ghicești (să știi cu certitudine, chiar) ce i-a lipsit: dragostea i-a lipsit = să simtă că-i centrul atenției părintești.
Când asiguri odraslei “de toate” (materiale, educaționale), dar tu însuți (ca adult) rătăcești în infinitele-ți tribulațiil conjugale sau în hățișul egolatriei, al disperatei tinereți de-a doua, n-ar trebui să aștepți să culegi numai roade fără viermi...
Dar cartea nu-i (numai) despre asta. E despre un copil “întârziat”, prins în trupul unui adult de 37 de ani, confruntat cu pierderea din nou, acum ireparabilă, a unui părinte.
Snobilimea citește “noi apariții” și ignoră vesel romane ca acesta! Zuleiha. Cilka. Circe. Stepanova. Morton. Lecturi de pisici! Pussy literatură.
Oroarea, pentru protagonistul Arvid, era aceea de a le semăna câtuși de puțin părinților săi - altfel, oameni “normali”, nici pe departe abuzivi, dar probabil un pic neatenți afectiv, un pic prea absorbiți de sine, ca atâția alți părinți de pe Terra (care prin atitudinea asta self-absorbed fut pe veci destinele copiilor lor).
Pentru “a se deosebi” de ei, Arvid ar fi săvârșit orice act ieșit din comun, inclusiv - intuiesc - aceea de a se fi lăsat omorât, dacă i s-ar fi ivit “oportunitatea”.
Până acolo, însă, se putea mulțumi cu abandonarea cursurilor universitare, falimentul personal, eșecul asumat în iubire, cvasi-mizeria locativă, traiul de pe azi pe mâine (ca muncitor maoist, obiect al derâderii din partea celorlalți “tovarăși”, care nu luau comunismul atât de în serios - nici n-aveai cum, într-un occident prosper de prin 1989, vremea când odiosul Zid al Berlinului cădea stârnind un norișor de praf în conștiințele cam încărcate ale intelectualilor europeni).
O peliculă destul de opacă de iluzoriu & defetism i se așezase, cu voia lui Arvid, peste felul cum ochii săi vedeau lumea.
Pentru noi evident autodistructiv, antieroul ăsta își lasă viața să-l trăiască și să-l poarte de colo-colo, în derivă. Aparent, fără un rost anume.
Aș spune că romanul de față este echivalentul izbitor de reușit (literar) al unei opere de psihologie despre deficiențele (și consecințele dramatice ale) transferului afectiv (defectuos) părinte - copil.
Cu certitudine v-ați confruntat cu întrebarea prostuță, dar foarte “populară”: ce i-o mai fi lipsit (cutărui copil, apucat pe cărări greșite), ai lui i-au dat de toate; “numai ei știu ce sacrificii au făcut” să nu-i lipsească nimic! Nu trebuie să fii nici detectiv, nici terapeut faimos ca să ghicești (să știi) ce i-a lipsit: dragostea i-a lipsit = să simtă că-i centrul atenției părintești.
Când asiguri odraslei “de toate” (materiale, educaționale), dar tu însuți (ca adult) rătăcești în infinitele-ți tribulațiil conjugale sau în hățișul egolatriei, al disperatei tinereți de-a doua, n-ar trebui să aștepți să culegi numai roade fără viermi...
Dar cartea nu-i (numai) despre asta. E despre un copil “întârziat”, prins în trupul unui adult de 37 de ani, confruntat cu pierderea din nou, acum ireparabilă, a unui părinte.
Cu certitudine, v-ați confruntat cu întrebarea prostuță, dar foarte “populară”: ce i-o mai fi lipsit (cutărui copil, apucat pe cărări greșite), ai lui i-au dat de toate; numai ei știu ce sacrificii au făcut să nu-i lipsească nimic! Nu trebuie să fii nici detectiv, nici terapeut faimos ca să ghicești (să știi cu certitudine, chiar) ce i-a lipsit: dragostea i-a lipsit = să simtă că-i centrul atenției părintești.
Când asiguri odraslei “de toate” (materiale, educaționale), dar tu însuți (ca adult) rătăcești în infinitele-ți tribulațiil conjugale sau în hățișul egolatriei, al disperatei tinereți de-a doua, n-ar trebui să aștepți să culegi numai roade fără viermi...
Dar cartea nu-i (numai) despre asta. E despre un copil “întârziat”, prins în trupul unui adult de 37 de ani, confruntat cu pierderea din nou, acum ireparabilă, a unui părinte.
May 9, 2020
Annesine veremediği mektubu anlattığı bölüm... O mektubu ezberledim.
April 4, 2021
Comprei-o imediatamente depois de terminar "Cavalos Roubados" (2003) e ter descoberto a história de vida de Petterson, porque tinha lido que era aqui que melhor dava conta do sentimento deixado pela tragédia. Esperei bastante para o ler, queria o momento certo para o sorver. Contudo o que encontrei foi melancolia, que é sem dúvida o melhor que tem o livro, uma enorme capacidade para nos enredar na névoa fria da Escandinávia, fazer sentir o pulsar lento da vida, e comover-nos com a languidez do desamparo. Mas o desamparo é excessivamente abstracto, acabando a saber a pouco.
December 3, 2017
The author makes lots of references about books, especially those of Hemingway and Remarque. His protagonist drinks Calvados like the doomed lovers in Remarques novels. Though he mocks at Hemingway's behaviour towards Fitzgerald, he imitates Hemingway's style of writing a lot and I'm not sure should I hate or love him for it? Maybe this resemblance makes the book so alluring?
I laughed again. ‘You and I,’ I said. ‘Just you and I.’‘Isn’t it fun,’ she said and she smiled. I let the oars rest in the rowlocks. The water around the boat fell silent, and silently the cabin was floating up above the rocks and the smoke rose softly from the chimney, and how impossible it was to grasp that in the end something as fine as this could be ground into dust.
Anyway, it was a fine novel about memory and the effort to survive with beautiful lyric floating sentences.
But something had happened, nothing hung together any more, all things had spaces, had distances between them, like satellites, attracted to and pushed away at the same instant, and it would take immense willpower to cross those spaces, those distances, much more than I had available, much more than I had the courage to use.
*
[...] there was open sea to both sides, and the sea, it was like an old friend, [...] many times I have stood like that in the night, looking out over the sea: there is a calm there to be found which at times I have badly needed.
*
[...] I had felt it so often myself; how time without warning could catch up with me and run around beneath my skin like tiny electric shocks and I could not stop them, no matter how much I tried. And when they let up at last and everything fell quiet, I was already a different person than I had been before, and it sometimes made me despair.
*
[...] and I realised that these fifteen minutes I had thought I could inhabit so safely were far from being an expanding space, on the contrary, it was like it always is with time, that it can slip through your fingers when you are not looking.
*
I had had that feeling for so long it was a part of who I was.
I laughed again. ‘You and I,’ I said. ‘Just you and I.’‘Isn’t it fun,’ she said and she smiled. I let the oars rest in the rowlocks. The water around the boat fell silent, and silently the cabin was floating up above the rocks and the smoke rose softly from the chimney, and how impossible it was to grasp that in the end something as fine as this could be ground into dust.
Anyway, it was a fine novel about memory and the effort to survive with beautiful lyric floating sentences.
But something had happened, nothing hung together any more, all things had spaces, had distances between them, like satellites, attracted to and pushed away at the same instant, and it would take immense willpower to cross those spaces, those distances, much more than I had available, much more than I had the courage to use.
*
[...] there was open sea to both sides, and the sea, it was like an old friend, [...] many times I have stood like that in the night, looking out over the sea: there is a calm there to be found which at times I have badly needed.
*
[...] I had felt it so often myself; how time without warning could catch up with me and run around beneath my skin like tiny electric shocks and I could not stop them, no matter how much I tried. And when they let up at last and everything fell quiet, I was already a different person than I had been before, and it sometimes made me despair.
*
[...] and I realised that these fifteen minutes I had thought I could inhabit so safely were far from being an expanding space, on the contrary, it was like it always is with time, that it can slip through your fingers when you are not looking.
*
I had had that feeling for so long it was a part of who I was.
December 2, 2018
Çok başarılı olmasını yarattığı karakterin ruh halini okuyucuya geçirmesinden belli ediyor diğer kitapları da elimde biran evvel okumalıyım.
Biraz depresif olduğu için her an önermiyorum çok duygusal değilseniz okuyunuz efenim.
Biraz depresif olduğu için her an önermiyorum çok duygusal değilseniz okuyunuz efenim.
September 12, 2025
Per Petterson’un dili çok sade, neredeyse sıradan gibi ama her cümlede hayatın en ağır yüklerini taşıyor. Anne–oğul ilişkisi, hastalık, geçmişle hesaplaşma, zamanın geri dönüşsüzlüğü… Bunları öyle abartısız bir şekilde anlatıyor ki, okurken bazen bir sahnenin içine sıkışıp kalıyorsunuz.
Kitap hızlı okunacak türden değil. Zaman zaman ağır ilerliyor, hatta biraz durağan. Ama o durgunluk içinde büyük bir duygu var: pişmanlık, özlem, yakınlık ve uzaklık aynı anda akıyor. Özellikle aile bağlarını, kırgınlıklarını ve geç kalmışlık hissini yaşayanlar için çok tanıdık bir ağırlık bırakıyor.
Benim için “Lanet Olsun Zaman Nehrine”, gösterişsiz ama içtenliğiyle vurucu bir kitap oldu. Bitirdiğimde içimde biraz hüzün, biraz da kendi aile geçmişime dönük bir ayna bıraktı.
Kitap hızlı okunacak türden değil. Zaman zaman ağır ilerliyor, hatta biraz durağan. Ama o durgunluk içinde büyük bir duygu var: pişmanlık, özlem, yakınlık ve uzaklık aynı anda akıyor. Özellikle aile bağlarını, kırgınlıklarını ve geç kalmışlık hissini yaşayanlar için çok tanıdık bir ağırlık bırakıyor.
Benim için “Lanet Olsun Zaman Nehrine”, gösterişsiz ama içtenliğiyle vurucu bir kitap oldu. Bitirdiğimde içimde biraz hüzün, biraz da kendi aile geçmişime dönük bir ayna bıraktı.
February 7, 2024
Det här är en prisad roman om när tiden kommer ikapp. Vi kan orsaka tillfällig fördämning genom att blunda för problem, känslor och beslut, men tidens flod kommer omsider att föra oss till mynningen. En flod är en resa som besöker livets toppar och dalar och som har ett oundvikligt slut. Att havet är slutstationen är en ganska fin tanke jag kanske kan vänja mig vid.
”Jag har egentligen aldrig lyckats se de stora förändringarna som är på väg förrän i sista ögonblicket, har inte sett hur en tendens rymmer en annan, som Mao brukade säga, hur det som kommer strömmande alldeles under ytan kan röra sig i en helt annan riktning än den man trodde att alla hade enats om, och om man inte är uppmärksam när allting vänder, står man återigen ensam kvar.”
Den vackra boktiteln kommer från en dikt av Mao, en politiker i Arvids smak. Han är det trettiosjuåriga berättarjaget och 1989 är han helt handfallen inför tidens flod. Europas kommunistiska regimer kollapsar, det gör också Arvids äktenskap och skyddsmur. Klädd i sin fars kläder försöker han närma sig sin cancersjuka mor och kanske också insikter om sig själv. Läsaren följer hans misslyckade försök inifrån, det är mycket plågsamt. Men också härligt, tack vare Per Pettersons lågmälda prosa och gestaltarskicklighet. Jag förbannar tidens flod är en fantastisk läsupplevelse, nästan lika bra som Ut och stjäla hästar.
”Jag hade aldrig gillat henne. Hon fick oss andra att se ut som idioter.”
Eftersom Arvid fokaliseras inifrån måste vi läsa honom som en opålitlig berättare. Genom omgivningens utsagor och bemötande förstår vi att han inte bara lurar läsaren utan också sig själv. När mamman betalar hans båtbiljett börjar jag nästan lipa. Jag tolkar det stora barnet Arvid som att han vill stå upp för det som är rätt, men så blir det fel – vilket det ju blir för oss alla stundtals – och då flyr Arvid med hjälp av alkohol.
”Det gick en spricka genom mitt liv, ett svalg, och det svalget kunde bara fyllas med öl.”
Jag älskar Pettersons prosa, inte minst flodmetaforen. Han återkommer till hur Rio Grande bildar gräns mellan USA och Mexiko som mellan Arvid och hans mor. Han berättar begåvat om klyftor mellan socialgrupper och generationer. Det är svårt för människor att förstå varandra.
”Jag försökte samla allt jag hade i huvudet till ett enda rakt streck.”
Författaren beskriver hur rädsla för existentiell ensamhet kan ta sig uttryck och diskuterar huruvida det kollektiva ”vi” som kommunismen erbjuder arbetarna kan fungera tröstande (när religion inte är ett alternativ). Jag tror Arvid skulle känna igen sig i det Sally Rooney skrivit om att civilisationen dog tillsammans med kommunismen och människan då förlorade känslan för skönhet. Sedan dess har vi levt i en värld utan hopp där skönhet handlar om att sälja saker.
”Jag har egentligen aldrig lyckats se de stora förändringarna som är på väg förrän i sista ögonblicket, har inte sett hur en tendens rymmer en annan, som Mao brukade säga, hur det som kommer strömmande alldeles under ytan kan röra sig i en helt annan riktning än den man trodde att alla hade enats om, och om man inte är uppmärksam när allting vänder, står man återigen ensam kvar.”
Den vackra boktiteln kommer från en dikt av Mao, en politiker i Arvids smak. Han är det trettiosjuåriga berättarjaget och 1989 är han helt handfallen inför tidens flod. Europas kommunistiska regimer kollapsar, det gör också Arvids äktenskap och skyddsmur. Klädd i sin fars kläder försöker han närma sig sin cancersjuka mor och kanske också insikter om sig själv. Läsaren följer hans misslyckade försök inifrån, det är mycket plågsamt. Men också härligt, tack vare Per Pettersons lågmälda prosa och gestaltarskicklighet. Jag förbannar tidens flod är en fantastisk läsupplevelse, nästan lika bra som Ut och stjäla hästar.
”Jag hade aldrig gillat henne. Hon fick oss andra att se ut som idioter.”
Eftersom Arvid fokaliseras inifrån måste vi läsa honom som en opålitlig berättare. Genom omgivningens utsagor och bemötande förstår vi att han inte bara lurar läsaren utan också sig själv. När mamman betalar hans båtbiljett börjar jag nästan lipa. Jag tolkar det stora barnet Arvid som att han vill stå upp för det som är rätt, men så blir det fel – vilket det ju blir för oss alla stundtals – och då flyr Arvid med hjälp av alkohol.
”Det gick en spricka genom mitt liv, ett svalg, och det svalget kunde bara fyllas med öl.”
Jag älskar Pettersons prosa, inte minst flodmetaforen. Han återkommer till hur Rio Grande bildar gräns mellan USA och Mexiko som mellan Arvid och hans mor. Han berättar begåvat om klyftor mellan socialgrupper och generationer. Det är svårt för människor att förstå varandra.
”Jag försökte samla allt jag hade i huvudet till ett enda rakt streck.”
Författaren beskriver hur rädsla för existentiell ensamhet kan ta sig uttryck och diskuterar huruvida det kollektiva ”vi” som kommunismen erbjuder arbetarna kan fungera tröstande (när religion inte är ett alternativ). Jag tror Arvid skulle känna igen sig i det Sally Rooney skrivit om att civilisationen dog tillsammans med kommunismen och människan då förlorade känslan för skönhet. Sedan dess har vi levt i en värld utan hopp där skönhet handlar om att sälja saker.
July 2, 2015
Per Petterson (n. 1952)
“Maldito Seja o Rio do Tempo” do norueguês Per Petterson (n. 1952), tem como personagem principal Arvid Jansen e o fio condutor da história decorre, essencialmente, de três grandes acontecimentos: a sua mãe tem um cancro no estômago, o seu casamento com 15 anos chega ao fim e a queda do Muro de Berlim.
Três grandes mudanças – morte, divórcio e convulsão geopolítica – enquadradas por uma narrativa que se desenvolve e amplia entre a Noruega e a Dinamarca, num conflito geracional entre mãe e filho, e numa ausência permanente da figura paterna.
O narrador Arvin Jansen procura na sua infância e juventude uma explicação para a ruptura ocorrida entre ele e a sua mãe, que se acentua dramaticamente pela sua opção política, a ideologia comunista, e pela rejeição de uma frequência universitária.
Um acontecimento trágico – a morte de um irmão – acentua o distanciamento familiar - a queda do Muro de Berlim – acaba por destruir as suas convicções políticas.
A narrativa de “Maldito Seja o Rio do Tempo” está impregnada de referência cinematográficas e literárias e é construída em diversos planos temporais, numa relação complexa entre Arvin Jansen e a sua mãe Ingrid, conflituosa, silenciosa e sufocante, mas que influenciou no passado e no presente o seu comportamento social e emocional.
Per Petterson escreve de uma forma rigorosa e convincente, construindo um conjunto de personagens complexas e ambíguas, enquadradas magistralmente pelas paisagens frias e agrestes da Noruega e da Dinamarca.
O título do livro é retirado de um poema de Mao “Imagens frágeis da partida, a aldeia naquele tempo. Amaldiçoo o rio do tempo; trinta e dois anos passaram.”
“Madito Seja o Rio do Tempo” é uma excelente leitura, mas “Cavalos Roubados” está num nível literário superior.
February 28, 2023
Zamanın acımasızlığını vurgulayan Mao’nun bir dizesini başlık olarak kullandığı bu romanında Norveçli yazar Per Petterson, hayat hikayesini birkaç kitabına yaydığı Arvid Jansen’in birçok açıdan kriz yaşadığı (evliliğinin çökmesi, ideallerini yitirmesi, annesinin kansere yakalanması gibi) 37 yaşındaki döneminden başlıyor anlatmaya. Tabii bu çizgisel bir anlatım olmuyor, sık geri dönüşler var. Esas odak Jansen’in annesiyle sorunlu ilişkisi. Anne-oğul ilişkisindeki tamamlanmamışlık, her iki tarafı da rahatsız eden ancak çözülemeyen soğukluk, Arvid’in gençlik dönemi, Maocu ideallerinden ötürü üniversiteyi bırakıp basit bir işçi olması (bu dönemden bakınca masal gibi veya daha kaba olmak gerekirse enayice geliyor değil mi? Ayrıca kendisi de işçi sınıf kökenli olmasına rağmen doğası elit Danimarkalı annenin oğluna tepkisinin önemli bir nedeni de bu olsa gerek), gençlik aşkı, diğer bazı aile üyeleriyle ve aile dostlarıyla ilişkiler İskandinav duyarlılığıyla, fazla her şeyi açık etmeden ama zaman zaman içinizi ürperten şekilde, fonda bölgenin zorlu ama güzel doğası ve de elbette bol içki, sigara kullanımıyla anlatılıyor. Petterson’un Arvid romanları birer demir leblebi, ama şimdiye kadar okuduğum üçü de sağlam edebiyat eserleri. Aslı Biçen’in çevirisi de gayet iyi.
January 6, 2013
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...) -- kept rescuing me from my impatience.
August 14, 2022
Əslində 1 ulduzluq kitabdı. Ruhsuz, soyuq, uzunçu. Təsvirlərin gərəksiz uzunluğu, həqiqətən, hekayə danışmaqdan uzaq durub boz təsvirlərlə usandırması.
Təkcə ölüm döşəyindəki qardaşının palatasından çıxıb bayırdakı rəngli həyatla xəstəxananı müqayisə etdiyi hissə bir anlam daşıdı mənim üçün, ikinci ulduzun səbəbi budu.
Skandinav yazıçılarla arama məsafə qoysam yaxşıdı.
Təkcə ölüm döşəyindəki qardaşının palatasından çıxıb bayırdakı rəngli həyatla xəstəxananı müqayisə etdiyi hissə bir anlam daşıdı mənim üçün, ikinci ulduzun səbəbi budu.
Skandinav yazıçılarla arama məsafə qoysam yaxşıdı.
January 17, 2022
Petterson'ın okuduğum ikinci kitabı bu. İlk okuduğum kitabı "At Çalmaya Gidiyoruz" olmuştu. O çok daha hareketli ve akan bir kitaptı, bu ise çok daha durgun ilerleyen bir kitap.
Norveç edebiyatının sevdiğim yanlarından biri acılarını, yaşadıkları hisleri tarif ederken kullandıkları o hisli ve ağır kelimeler. Viski içerken damağınızı yakan o his ile aynı. Bu kitapta o duyguları hissetiriyo size.
Kitap, ana karakterimiz Arvid'in annesine Mide kanseri teşhisi konmasıyla başlıyor ve aynı zamanda eşinden boşanmak üzere olduğunu öğreniyoruz. Daha ilk sayfalarda, bundan sonra okuyacağımız şeylerin neler olacağını biraz belli ediyor gibi.
Hikayeler içerisinde zamanda atlamalar yapması ara ara benim hikayeden kopmama neden oldu. Bazen kayboldum, döndüğümdeyse yeniden keyif almaya başladım.
"Zamanın dışında bir adamdım ben. Ya da karakterimde bir kusur, temelinde her geçen sene büyüyen bir çatlak vardı."
İçimizdeki kapanmayan çatlakların bir gün kapanması dileğimle.
Lanet Olsun Zaman Nehrine
Keyifli okumalar.
Norveç edebiyatının sevdiğim yanlarından biri acılarını, yaşadıkları hisleri tarif ederken kullandıkları o hisli ve ağır kelimeler. Viski içerken damağınızı yakan o his ile aynı. Bu kitapta o duyguları hissetiriyo size.
Kitap, ana karakterimiz Arvid'in annesine Mide kanseri teşhisi konmasıyla başlıyor ve aynı zamanda eşinden boşanmak üzere olduğunu öğreniyoruz. Daha ilk sayfalarda, bundan sonra okuyacağımız şeylerin neler olacağını biraz belli ediyor gibi.
Hikayeler içerisinde zamanda atlamalar yapması ara ara benim hikayeden kopmama neden oldu. Bazen kayboldum, döndüğümdeyse yeniden keyif almaya başladım.
"Zamanın dışında bir adamdım ben. Ya da karakterimde bir kusur, temelinde her geçen sene büyüyen bir çatlak vardı."
İçimizdeki kapanmayan çatlakların bir gün kapanması dileğimle.
Lanet Olsun Zaman Nehrine
Keyifli okumalar.
June 22, 2020
-There are some spoilers in this review -
It's not that this was a bad book. Yet, there were lots of problems with it in my opinion.
First of all, it was a bit confusing when the writer switched back and forth between the narrator's past and the present in a random order, like the narrator was this really old man who is reminiscing his old days but mixing a memory with another, making the reader pause at least a few seconds and say, "Wait... Where and when are we again? Are we with him and his mother in the present or are we with him and his mother in the past? Or is this a memory about him and someone else than his mother entirely? So, this precedes that?" - which was absolutely distracting and broke the flow for me many times.
Another issue I have with this story is, there is no character development. I understand that this is the story of a man who couldn't find his place in life, who has lost or is about to lose everything he holds dear, who is frustrated for not being able to express the intense feelings he has in an environment where everybody suppresses their feelings and distancing themselves from the others. But there is no character development, neither on his nor his mother's part. He's 37, yet acts like a child, and nothing makes him mature a bit. His mother is cold, and probably doesn't care much for her son, no matter what he does. They stare at death but there is no reconciliation like a reader would expect, no expression of love, nothing happens. Nothing is explained: why the mother went to Denmark; if the narrator's wife is the girl from his past and if she's not, and she had nothing to add to the story why the hell we read about that girl this much OR the encounters with the old neighbours when there are many other things that could be added to the story to improve it. It just doesn't feel believable that even in the shadow of certain death, no one budges; the mother doesn't even pretend to care for reconciliation or say something good or reassuring to her son. She acts like her son is an unwanted dog that follows her everywhere, annoying her to the guts, because a son can't wish to be with his sick mother. Even him crying for her mother is something embarrassing for her - it's just not believable that she didn't feel sad seeing her son like that, that no one empathizes with him. They are just embarrassed coz God forbid if a man cries for his dying mother.
Now, I'm not saying there are no real people or fictional characters that would behave like this, that wouldn't budge even a bit and die without resolving anything due to their stubborn nature. There are books that wouldn't be what they are today without these kinds of characters. But in the case of this book, they do nothing to serve the book. It ends abruptly like there should be at least another chapter to it. Nothing is resolved neither for the characters nor for the readers. If there was an aim underneath all this confusion that the writer was going for, it's not easily deductible. And even if it is deducted, it doesn't carry the reader to enlightenment. It just leaves you with this sticky, dampish, and a bit of itchy feeling that you'd feel when you couldn't shower right away after a day of swimming in a slightly polluted, mossy sea.
After reading "Out Stealing Horses" and giving it five stars - especially for that last sentence that made me tear up -, this was a bit disappointing for me. I was at least waiting for an ending which would be on par with Out Stealing Horses'. Hence the two stars.
It's not that this was a bad book. Yet, there were lots of problems with it in my opinion.
First of all, it was a bit confusing when the writer switched back and forth between the narrator's past and the present in a random order, like the narrator was this really old man who is reminiscing his old days but mixing a memory with another, making the reader pause at least a few seconds and say, "Wait... Where and when are we again? Are we with him and his mother in the present or are we with him and his mother in the past? Or is this a memory about him and someone else than his mother entirely? So, this precedes that?" - which was absolutely distracting and broke the flow for me many times.
Another issue I have with this story is, there is no character development. I understand that this is the story of a man who couldn't find his place in life, who has lost or is about to lose everything he holds dear, who is frustrated for not being able to express the intense feelings he has in an environment where everybody suppresses their feelings and distancing themselves from the others. But there is no character development, neither on his nor his mother's part. He's 37, yet acts like a child, and nothing makes him mature a bit. His mother is cold, and probably doesn't care much for her son, no matter what he does. They stare at death but there is no reconciliation like a reader would expect, no expression of love, nothing happens. Nothing is explained: why the mother went to Denmark; if the narrator's wife is the girl from his past and if she's not, and she had nothing to add to the story why the hell we read about that girl this much OR the encounters with the old neighbours when there are many other things that could be added to the story to improve it. It just doesn't feel believable that even in the shadow of certain death, no one budges; the mother doesn't even pretend to care for reconciliation or say something good or reassuring to her son. She acts like her son is an unwanted dog that follows her everywhere, annoying her to the guts, because a son can't wish to be with his sick mother. Even him crying for her mother is something embarrassing for her - it's just not believable that she didn't feel sad seeing her son like that, that no one empathizes with him. They are just embarrassed coz God forbid if a man cries for his dying mother.
Now, I'm not saying there are no real people or fictional characters that would behave like this, that wouldn't budge even a bit and die without resolving anything due to their stubborn nature. There are books that wouldn't be what they are today without these kinds of characters. But in the case of this book, they do nothing to serve the book. It ends abruptly like there should be at least another chapter to it. Nothing is resolved neither for the characters nor for the readers. If there was an aim underneath all this confusion that the writer was going for, it's not easily deductible. And even if it is deducted, it doesn't carry the reader to enlightenment. It just leaves you with this sticky, dampish, and a bit of itchy feeling that you'd feel when you couldn't shower right away after a day of swimming in a slightly polluted, mossy sea.
After reading "Out Stealing Horses" and giving it five stars - especially for that last sentence that made me tear up -, this was a bit disappointing for me. I was at least waiting for an ending which would be on par with Out Stealing Horses'. Hence the two stars.
January 14, 2021
Hayatımın bir döneminde yaşadığım aynı duyguları bana tekrar hatırlatmayı başaran bir roman. Ölümün keskin, kederli bir gerçek oluşu ve bizim bununla baş edemiyor olmamız..
January 6, 2023
37 yaşlı, 2 uşaq atası Arvid boşanma ərəfəsindədir. Günlərin bir günü qardaşı zəng edib, anasının xərçəng xəstəliyinə tutulduğunu xəbər verir. O da küsülü olduğu anası ilə vaxt keçirmək üçün onunla birlikdə Danimarkaya yola düşür. Bu qısa səfər əsnasında müəllif tez-tez oxucunu keçmişə boylanmağa, ana-oğul münasibətlərinə nəzər salmağa məcbur edir.
Ailənin istənilən, amma sevilməyən övladı, üç sarışın qardaşın "qaçqına" oxşadılan qarabuğdayı tayı, diqqət çəkmək üçün kommunistlərə qoşulan, bununla da anası ilə arasına Berlin divarı hörən, xatirələrində yer alan qardaşlarını belə silməyə hazır olan eqoist, infantil və cəsarətsiz oğul. Ona qarşı qoyulan ana isə zəhmətkeş, güclü və tənhadır. Dolayısıyla, bu cür ananın bu cür oğula sevgi göstərə bilməsi çətindir. Hələ də biletini aldığın, cibinə pul sıxışdırdığın, hər balaca problemdə ağlayacaq çiyin axtaran zəif birini 37 yaşında da adam edə bilmədiyini görmək çətindir.
Heç Arvidin dərdi də ana sevgisi deyil, onun dərdi yenə özüdür: inandığı hər şey bir-bir məhv olur, növbə ilə hər şeyi əlindən alınır - əvvəlcə kommunizm, sonra evliliyi, sonda isə uşaqlıq xatirələri. İndi onu başqalarından fərqləndirən heç nə yoxdur, indi əzmini göstərmək zamanıdır, amma Arvid nə edir? Zamanın axınını lənətləyir.
Ailənin istənilən, amma sevilməyən övladı, üç sarışın qardaşın "qaçqına" oxşadılan qarabuğdayı tayı, diqqət çəkmək üçün kommunistlərə qoşulan, bununla da anası ilə arasına Berlin divarı hörən, xatirələrində yer alan qardaşlarını belə silməyə hazır olan eqoist, infantil və cəsarətsiz oğul. Ona qarşı qoyulan ana isə zəhmətkeş, güclü və tənhadır. Dolayısıyla, bu cür ananın bu cür oğula sevgi göstərə bilməsi çətindir. Hələ də biletini aldığın, cibinə pul sıxışdırdığın, hər balaca problemdə ağlayacaq çiyin axtaran zəif birini 37 yaşında da adam edə bilmədiyini görmək çətindir.
Heç Arvidin dərdi də ana sevgisi deyil, onun dərdi yenə özüdür: inandığı hər şey bir-bir məhv olur, növbə ilə hər şeyi əlindən alınır - əvvəlcə kommunizm, sonra evliliyi, sonda isə uşaqlıq xatirələri. İndi onu başqalarından fərqləndirən heç nə yoxdur, indi əzmini göstərmək zamanıdır, amma Arvid nə edir? Zamanın axınını lənətləyir.
March 6, 2014
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
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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