• An August IndieBound “Indie Next
Great Reads” selection • • One of the Millions “Most Anticipated Books of 2010” •
• On the summer reading lists of the
Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Time, and Newsday •
“An emotional
suckerpunch. . . . Petterson blends enough hope with the gorgeously evoked
melancholy to come up with a
heartbreaking and cautiously optimistic work.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review
“Petterson tells another poignant, harrowing and sometimes comic story of a man coming to
terms with his dying mother, his failures (job, marriage) and his failures in
the eyes of his mother: ‘You squirt!’ But mother
and son are bound by feelings and memories for which even the word ‘love’ doesn’t
do justice.”
—THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Tracing the history of [Arvid] Jansen’s life and
exploring politics, philosophy, the nature of love, and the question of how to
live a good life, Petterson’s latest is melancholy,
beautiful, and at times darkly
funny—another
extraordinary novel from a master of the form.”
—JILL OWENS, POWELL’S BOOKS, Portland, OR
“The novel abounds in Peterson’s delicate dialogue
between present and past selves. . . . Add this sense of the deep archaeology
of emotion to a tact and nuance in each sculpted paragraph that ought to make clumsier authors weep with
envy, and you have another
masterclass in the alchemising of time and loss into the gold of art.”
—BOYD TONKIN, THE INDEPENDENT (U.K.)
“[Petterson] deftly alternates between present and past.
. . . His prose is elegant and spare.”
“A cleverly
constructed story, written in an unhurried, sometimes lyrical prose that
builds steadily towards its moving conclusion.”
—TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT(U.K.)
“All the inevitability of life, its fragile glue and the doubts that stalk the
survivors are summoned and considered in Petterson’s candid, allusive fiction.
There is no easy sentiment, only genuine
emotional power. His tender new novel is as masterfully evocative as In
the Wake and Out Stealing
Horses, as gentle as To
Siberia, and as exceptional as all three.”
—THE IRISH TIMES
“[Petterson’s]
writing has returned to its artistic ‘home,’ and what’s more returned to it
with greater maturity and confidence. I Curse the River of Time is a work of blackest tragicomedy, a
novel as cold and scintillating and desolate as the northern winter landscapes
that are its setting.”
—THE GUARDIAN (U.K.)
“Fans of Out Stealing Horses will not be
disappointed by Petterson’s latest novel, which pulses with lyrical prose. Set against the backdrop of the collapse
of Communism in 1989, the story follows Arvid, who, when his mother is
diagnosed with cancer, joins her at their summer house. Shifting between the
present and Arvid’s memories, I
Curse the River of Time explores the strained relationship between
mother and son, as well as Arvid’s struggle to make sense of a life that has
gotten away from him.”
—NATALIE DELBUSSO, WOLFGANG BOOKS, Phoenixville, PA
“Though Petterson
is often compared to Hemingway and Carver, he has etched a vernacular all his
own. The loveliness of his prose lies not only with its distilled nature,
but also in its repetitions and unexpected cadences, which infuse his style
with a tenderness unseen in other spare
prose virtuosos.”
—THE COLLAGIST
“The atmosphere of this latest from Petterson, famed for
the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner Out
Stealing Horses, is as gray as the stark Norwegian landscape. Melancholy
permeates every character like a dense Oslo fog. Yet, this author’s gift is his ability to convey so much emotion in such a
sparse prose style.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL, starred review
“[Petterson] offers here a kind of origami novel: time bends and folds around the characters
so they are both young and old, healthy and sick, dead and alive. His considerable skill is evident in
the clarity with which readers are immersed in each chapter—though we may leap
backwards and forwards on the temporal plane, we never stumble or trip. . . . The final product is something important,
lovely, and a bit mysterious.”
—FOREWORD MAGAZINE
“I Curse the River of Time refuses to be
read. It begs to be experienced.
. . . It should be read by anyone and everyone who calls themselves a
reader. It should be placed on
everyone’s Must Have lists. It
should not be missed.”
—THE NEXT BEST BOOK BLOG, 5 of 5 stars
“[Petterson’s] novel reads like a volume of a larger
life-account: a turning-point, certainly, but only a chapter on a much longer
path. Impressive, in every respect.”
