Library Journal

At 37, Arvid Jansen sees his world falling apart. His divorce is imminent, the Cold War is over, and the life choices he made to burnish his credibility with the Communist Party now seem sadly irrelevant. Eschewing the college education his parents toiled so hard to provide him, Arvid chose shift work in a factory, a decision that caused a rift with his mother, all the more untenable now that she's been diagnosed with cancer. Crippled by grief, guilt, and an unlovely excess of self-pity, Arvid tries to come to grips with the present by reexamining the past, in particular the effect of his younger brother's death on the family dynamic. VERDICT 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 spare prose style. Petterson's reputation and the litany of prizes awarded to this work after its release in Europe last year make it essential for all literary collections.