The same events are often described from different perspectives, which has a layering effect: One version casts light on another, so you become aware of the moments of stubbornness or confusion when people began to move apart. As all the voices are sad and flat, they can be hard to distinguish, yet there is a powerfully dense, intimate texture to these emotional landscapes as rendered by Petterson and his translator, Don Bartlett…One plain thought runs into another: regrets, memories and fading hopes tacked together without fuss or ornamentation…Characters have dull thoughts, but they also have thoughts that are affecting and startling, revealing small details that illuminate the heart of the novel. Your patience is tested, then rewarded. This isn't stream of consciousness so much as an international shipping lane of it, an immense, slow-churning current of interiority. It won't be to all tastes, but it is a fine, defiant way of capturing character in its resolute peculiarity.
In his new novel (and a 1987 debut now appearing in America for the first time), a living legend of Norway brings his themes of childhood memory and fate into new light.