Rate this book

I Curse The River Of Time (2008)

by Per Petterson(Favorite Author)

3.36 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1555975569 (ISBN13: 9781555975562)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Graywolf Press

review 1: Dit boek is bekroond met de belangrijkste Scan. literaire prijs.Ik vond het niet geweldig.Het gaat over Arvid Jansen, het is 1989, hij staat op het punt van scheiden en zijn moeder is ernstig ziek.In zijn jonge jaren hangt hij het communisme aan.Het verhaal verspringt regelmatig in tijd.Arvid probeert zijn leven nieuwe zin te geven, maar beseft dat de tijd door zijn vingers glipt.Misschien is het allemaal te laat.
review 2: I wavered on this book for a bit. On the one hand the tone is decidedly minimalist, but the minimalism there on display is gorgeous, crossing the line into the poetic many times. And on the other hand there's relatively little to the story, much alluded too obliquely, if at all. To some, maybe, this would be a source of frustration. And ... moreI must admit that I was left wanting, desirous of just a little more. But out of genuine affection, even love, for the story and its characters and its setting.Unlike the minimalism of someone like, say, Hemingway, the minimalism here is a softer variety of stoic, more emotionally frustrated and filled to the brim, just waiting to explosively burst under the surface.And it never does, and that's beautiful. Why? Because it feels genuine, it feels real. Petterson is a master at delineating the cracks and fissures endemic to every familial relationship, and makes no attempt to 'save' his characters or give them the big emotional catharsis that so many Western audiences would be starving for in this kind of story.That was where the wavering in my assessment of this story ceased. I realized I had been looking at the proceedings with a decidedly Western cultural mindset that just didn't jive with what was going on. And said cultural mindset, the artifice of it at least, is a fallacy. Western families go through the same emotional and almost literal wars that our friends in Europe do, but maybe we're just less inclined to write stories describing that kind of thing. I can speak from experience as regards this, where people just want 'to be entertained' and for their books (and movies, and songs, etc) to be 'simple' and predictably warm and cookie cutter.Well, that, for lack of a better term, is bullshit. If you want pat simplistic pap to indulge in, it's there. But it's inferior, sorry. It's nowhere near as intellectually or emotionally nourishing and, in all honesty, nowhere near as relevant or important.That is my roundabout way of saying: read this book. It's not transcendent, though in spots it troubles those waters. Gorgeously described and painfully human, this book will wend its way into your soul with the force of a gentle hammer or tidal wave, waking you from gentle dreams to the necessary harshness of life. less

Download links for: I Curse the River of Time

Advertising