It is 1989 and all over Europe Communism is crumbling. Arvid Jansen is in the throes of a divorce. At the same time, his mother is diagnosed with cancer. Over a few intense autumn days, we follow Arvid as he struggles to find a new footing in his life, while everything around him is changing at staggering speed. As he attempts to negotiate the present, he remembers holidays on the beach with his brothers, his early working life devoted to Communist ideals, courtship, and his relationship with his tough, independent mother - a relationship full of distance and unspoken pain that is central to Arvid's life.
I Curse the River of Time
and over 1.5 million other books are available for Amazon Kindle . Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Special Offer until June 30, 2013: Receive an additional £5 promotional Gift Certificate, when you trade-in at least £10 worth of books. Learn more. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Review
"Per Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist" (Richard Ford )
"Tight-lipped with one another, his characters open their hearts to the reader, making us witnesses to their most private selves. He makes the reader lean in, out of the wind, to listen closely.... Petterson has the ability to be simultaneously restrained and terribly tender...Extraordinary skill... There is a quality that I can only call charm, or something like charm, to Petterson's essentially dark and lonely sensibility." (New York Times )
"Petterson applies candour, sensitivity and humour to his intimate studies of life as lived by us, the ordinary majority, and the result is singular magic...resoundingly human...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...Tender, masterfully evocative" (Irish Times )
"Spare, cool, precise prose...a powerful evocation of the difficulty of communication within families" (Evening Standard )
"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." (Rachel Cusk Guardian )
"Tight-lipped with one another, his characters open their hearts to the reader, making us witnesses to their most private selves. He makes the reader lean in, out of the wind, to listen closely.... Petterson has the ability to be simultaneously restrained and terribly tender...Extraordinary skill... There is a quality that I can only call charm, or something like charm, to Petterson's essentially dark and lonely sensibility." (New York Times )
"Petterson applies candour, sensitivity and humour to his intimate studies of life as lived by us, the ordinary majority, and the result is singular magic...resoundingly human...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...Tender, masterfully evocative" (Irish Times )
"Spare, cool, precise prose...a powerful evocation of the difficulty of communication within families" (Evening Standard )
"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." (Rachel Cusk Guardian )
Book Description
A haunting literary masterpiece by the bestselling and prize-winning author of Out Stealing Horses
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I Curse the River of Time is simply a stunning work of literary fiction. Beautifully written and translated, emotional and atmospheric and at the same time not lacking in humour. At times I felt as if I was sneaking a look into a diary with every emotion laid bare. I am sure that the mother/son relationship will resonate with most people who read this book. Definitely not for anyone looking for a plot driven, fast paced novel, but if you are looking for a read where language and character take centre stage then I can't recommend this highly enough.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is the second book I have read in the last year by Per Petterson. The first, "Out Stealing Horses", was chosen by the Round the World Book Group of which I am a member. That was one of the best books which I have read in the nearly nine years of our literary journey round the world. I scored it at 8.5 out of 10.
"I curse the river of time" is every bit as good. It is the story of Arvid Jansen, whose life is a mess. When the book opens, a few years before Arvid's present, his mother has been diagnosed as having stomach cancer. He too has been a smoker for years, so no pressure, then. To top that, Arvid is in the middle of a divorce with the attendant worries about the effect this could have on his two daughters.
Arvid's political belief's are in a state of flux. Despite being from a relatively well-off family he has been a communist for years and finds himself living in one of the most dramatic periods of the later 20th century, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the impending collapse of the Soviet Empire.
We have an omniscient narrator here, and it works. Arvid tells us his own story, but he also narrates events which he wasn't present at, and which we have no evidence that the protagonists told him anything about. This keeps the story flowing, and begins to tie things together. We begin to understand his relationships with other people, especially his strong-willed mother.
This is the story of a relatively ordinary man, with relatively common problems, living in the interesting times of the Chinese curse, but making a first rate story out of it.
I'm not going to give you any more information. It's an excellent book, and I'm sure you will love it as much as I did.... Read more ›
"I curse the river of time" is every bit as good. It is the story of Arvid Jansen, whose life is a mess. When the book opens, a few years before Arvid's present, his mother has been diagnosed as having stomach cancer. He too has been a smoker for years, so no pressure, then. To top that, Arvid is in the middle of a divorce with the attendant worries about the effect this could have on his two daughters.
Arvid's political belief's are in a state of flux. Despite being from a relatively well-off family he has been a communist for years and finds himself living in one of the most dramatic periods of the later 20th century, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the impending collapse of the Soviet Empire.
We have an omniscient narrator here, and it works. Arvid tells us his own story, but he also narrates events which he wasn't present at, and which we have no evidence that the protagonists told him anything about. This keeps the story flowing, and begins to tie things together. We begin to understand his relationships with other people, especially his strong-willed mother.
This is the story of a relatively ordinary man, with relatively common problems, living in the interesting times of the Chinese curse, but making a first rate story out of it.
I'm not going to give you any more information. It's an excellent book, and I'm sure you will love it as much as I did.... Read more ›
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Arvid, the protagonist of this Norwegian novel, is fifty now, and he has witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the massacre at Tiananmen Square, and the demise of Communism, along with major changes in his own life and in the lives of his family members. This character novel opens in the middle of a swirl of Arvid's memories: time has flashed back to 1989, and Arvid is thirty-seven, at a major crossroads in his life, the details of which evolve slowly. Taking an oblique approach, author Per Petterson embeds Arvid's story within these memories, conveying them in language which twists and turns in upon itself while slowly moving forward in strong, musical cadences. Vibrant imagery, some of it symbolic, connects past, distant past, and present, as Arvid's story, propelled by his recollections of family relationships and his own life choices, evolves to show how he became the person he is.
As the novel begins, Arvid's mother has just discovered that she has a recurrence of cancer, and she has decided to take the ferry from Norway back to her "home," on Jutland. Arvid has had a testy relationship with his mother over the years and has not talked with her in a while, trying to avoid telling her that he and his wife are getting a divorce, but when he gets a message that his mother has left home, he, too, takes the ferry to Jutland to see her. During this time, he is inundated with memories, which come, seemingly at random, from different times in his life.
Throughout, however, Arvid returns to stories of his mother, who, though hard pressed for cash herself, still gave him money when he was in college, but who, when he decided to leave college and give up his chance to escape the kind of life she and her husband had been living, smacked him, hard, across his face.... Read more ›
As the novel begins, Arvid's mother has just discovered that she has a recurrence of cancer, and she has decided to take the ferry from Norway back to her "home," on Jutland. Arvid has had a testy relationship with his mother over the years and has not talked with her in a while, trying to avoid telling her that he and his wife are getting a divorce, but when he gets a message that his mother has left home, he, too, takes the ferry to Jutland to see her. During this time, he is inundated with memories, which come, seemingly at random, from different times in his life.
Throughout, however, Arvid returns to stories of his mother, who, though hard pressed for cash herself, still gave him money when he was in college, but who, when he decided to leave college and give up his chance to escape the kind of life she and her husband had been living, smacked him, hard, across his face.... Read more ›
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By Quake
Format:Hardcover
Same author as Out Stealing Horses and just as good. You may not like it if you like fast action as it is slow and contemplative. If you want perception and insight and beautiful writing, buy it now.
Format:Paperback
Norwegian writer Per Petterson writes in a sparse, restrained style which somehow mirrors the bleak Scandinavian towns and landscapes he describes in his novels. In I Curse the River of Time, we meet Arvid Janse, a character who features in other Petterson novels, a tired man who has failed to fulfil his potential and has a propensity to cheap whisky and memories of better times.
Arvid is going through a divorce, and his mother is dying of stomach cancer. We join the story with his mother leaving Oslo on a ferry to sail small town in Jutland where she grew up, and where the family have a beach house near a remote village.
Petterson plays tricks with his readers straight-away as we read Arvid's detailed description of his mother's voyage complete with her thoughts and actions, down to the way she twisted the top from a bottle of whisky and filled her glass half-full - actions which her son, the first person narrator could not possibly have seen. However, it all creates atmosphere: the cold sea and the bleak landscape of North Jutland with it marram grass, pine trees and sea-mist.
Of course, the trouble with first-person narratives like this is that you spend the whole book inside the head of the narrator. We get carried along with the thoughts of the character so far, then sometimes we think, hang on a minute, do I really want to be here? For Arvid Jansen expresses himself beautifully but he is not always the most uplifting company being prone to a depressive outlook on life and an overwhelming sense of defeat.
The book moves easily back and forth between the present day and earlier times when Arvid dropped out of college because he wanted to bring a Maoist form of socialism to the industrial workers of his town.... Read more ›
Arvid is going through a divorce, and his mother is dying of stomach cancer. We join the story with his mother leaving Oslo on a ferry to sail small town in Jutland where she grew up, and where the family have a beach house near a remote village.
Petterson plays tricks with his readers straight-away as we read Arvid's detailed description of his mother's voyage complete with her thoughts and actions, down to the way she twisted the top from a bottle of whisky and filled her glass half-full - actions which her son, the first person narrator could not possibly have seen. However, it all creates atmosphere: the cold sea and the bleak landscape of North Jutland with it marram grass, pine trees and sea-mist.
Of course, the trouble with first-person narratives like this is that you spend the whole book inside the head of the narrator. We get carried along with the thoughts of the character so far, then sometimes we think, hang on a minute, do I really want to be here? For Arvid Jansen expresses himself beautifully but he is not always the most uplifting company being prone to a depressive outlook on life and an overwhelming sense of defeat.
The book moves easily back and forth between the present day and earlier times when Arvid dropped out of college because he wanted to bring a Maoist form of socialism to the industrial workers of his town.... Read more ›
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 34 reviews
3.5 out of 5 stars
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gorgeous
This is a stunning book. The language is poetic & lyrical & you savour each line. It's one of those books you treasure. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Lorna
1.0 out of 5 stars
One long cigarette break
I haven't read anything else by this author, so had no preconceptions or expectations. Based on this book I would be loathe to venture further into his literary world. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mr. F. G. Dineen
4.0 out of 5 stars
unusual and successful meditation on life and its imperfections
Somehow this novel does convey "the river of time" and also the reasons the central figure, Arvid, has for agreeing with Chairman Mao and cursing it. Read more
Published 21 months ago by William Jordan
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
