I Curse the River of Time
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).
