I Curse the River of Time

Per Petterson

Arvid Jansen follows his mother from Oslo, to their beach home in Denmark. He’s heard she’s dying of cancer and wants to be with her. He takes the ferry, gets drunk and hits a fellow passenger, and he spends the following days sleeping, drinking and trying to please the mother he so clearly adores.

I Curse the River of Time is a compulsive, magnificent read. In his sparse but shining prose, Petterson shows a family’s life through Arvid’s inner dialogue, through his memory and the constraints of the present. Indeed, he combines all these components in a single paragraph, enabling the reader to live in Arvid’s head. It’s a masterful achievement from the Norwegian winner of the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin literary award. (Out Stealing Horses).

Arvid’s life is at a crossroads. His young wife no longer likes him. He’s living with devastating panic and paranoia. Arvid has always felt a misfit. He resembles his father and would rather be like the brothers who steal most of his mother’s attention.

The complicated mother-son relationship is beautifully conveyed. When Arvid arrives, finding his mother sitting on the beach, she knows it’s him. “I heard your thoughts clatter all the way down the road,” she says, before asking him if he’s broke.

There is much that the narrative doesn’t say. We know the brother down from Arvid has died — we’re shown him on his deathbed — and see Arvid resembling his father in his inability to cope. But we don’t learn why he died.

A communist, Arvid leaves college for a factory job at the party’s suggestion — the only student to do so. When the Wall tumbles he cannot believe it.

“I could not breathe, where had I been?” And that is a metaphor for Arvid’s whole life. Readers leave him unresolved, but they won’t forget him.