Norwegian Session -- December 2009
The Book:
A brother and sister are forced ever more closely together after the suicide of their grandfather. Their parents’ neglect leaves them wandering the streets of their small Danish village. “Sistermine” dreams of escaping to Siberia, for “skies that were cold and clear, where it was easy to breathe and easy to see for long distances.” But Siberia seems increasingly distant as she helplessly watches her brother become increasingly involved in resisting the Nazis.
The narrator in the novel is a woman of sixty. She recalls her life from the nineteen-thirties, when she was six or seven, until she was an unwed mother in her early twenties.
Life at home is forbidding, and the mood is not lightened by a grandfather who is subject to periodic rages, drinking binges, and, as it turns out, suicidal impulses. Jesper and his sister, not surprisingly, imagine other places, distant ones. For her, it is Siberia, with “open skies that were cold and clear, where it was easy to breathe and easy to see for long distances.” For Jesper, it is Morocco, and “his pictures were mysterious and alluring in black and white with barren mountains in the far distance and sun-scorched faces and sun-scorched towns.”
About the author:
Per Petterson (born 1952) worked for several years as an unskilled labourer, trained as a librarian, and worked as a bookseller, writer, and translator before publishing his first work,
Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (
Ash In His Mouth, Sand In His Shoe).
He has won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the novel Out Stealing Horses, which has been translated into more than thirty languages and was named a Best Book of 2007 by The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly.
For
To Siberia Petterson was nominated for the Nordic Council’s Literary Award and nominated for The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
.
The Reviews:
The New York Times Book Review: “Evokes the same reflective grandeur that made
Out Stealing Horses burn so brightly."
Los Angeles Times: “A brilliant re-creation of Hansel and Gretel . . . A darkly beautiful story, an evocation of the grim equanimity of the Danish people, the fierce and constant weather and the childish idea that we could possibly save each other from the world.”
Time: “Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a northern landscape painting—all shafts of light and clear palpable chill.”
The New Yorker: “
To Siberia is written in language that is clear, rhythmic, and often evocative. Petterson could be labelled a “prose stylist,” except you never feel that he is styling anything; you feel that he is simply setting down sentences, unaffected by slang and hip foreign expressions. (This comes through remarkably well in the faithful translations of Anne Born.) His plots unfold much as life does, taking unexpected turns that force the author to confront destiny’s hazards.” (
Jeffrey Franck - Oct. 20, 208)
The Tennessean: “Combines the unflinching depiction of suffering in
Out Stealing Horses with a historical dimension, the Nazi occupation of Denmark, that gives American readers insight into a cold region during a dark time . . . Its artistry and style should help cement Petterson's sterling reputation.”
A brother and sister are forced ever more closely together after the suicide of their grandfather. Their parents’ neglect leaves them wandering the streets of their small Danish village. “Sistermine” dreams of escaping to Siberia, for “skies that were cold and clear, where it was easy to breathe and easy to see for long distances.” But Siberia seems increasingly distant as she helplessly watches her brother become increasingly involved in resisting the Nazis.
The narrator in the novel is a woman of sixty. She recalls her life from the nineteen-thirties, when she was six or seven, until she was an unwed mother in her early twenties.
Life at home is forbidding, and the mood is not lightened by a grandfather who is subject to periodic rages, drinking binges, and, as it turns out, suicidal impulses. Jesper and his sister, not surprisingly, imagine other places, distant ones. For her, it is Siberia, with “open skies that were cold and clear, where it was easy to breathe and easy to see for long distances.” For Jesper, it is Morocco, and “his pictures were mysterious and alluring in black and white with barren mountains in the far distance and sun-scorched faces and sun-scorched towns.”