Books

To Siberia By Per Petterson; translated from Norwegian by Anne Born; Graywolf Press, $22; out Sept 30

SYNOPSIS
Per Petterson’s To Siberia is a frostbitten, beautifully rendered addition to the “family can really screw you up” genre. Set in Denmark in the ’30s and ’40s, the book is narrated by a restless woman—a character Petterson inhabits with uncanny familiarity—who dreams of leaving Jutland for the Soviet tundra (she has a childlike infatuation with the Trans-Siberian railroad). Traumatized by her grandfather’s suicide, the heroine wants to escape her religious nut of a mother and unyielding father. The young girl’s only source of affection is her charismatic brother, Jesper—who is, like her, stricken with wanderlust. Eventually, Jesper abandons his sister to join the resistance against the Nazis, and the narrator finds herself completely adrift, floating from relationship to relationship in a futile attempt to fill the void left by her brother. Petterson’s protagonist—23, brilliant, pregnant and without hope when we leave her—is a heartbreaking portrait of lost possibilities.

BACKSTORY
Unlike the other two authors here, Petterson is (a) alive and (b) the leader of a mostly quiet life as a librarian-cum-novelist, but his books reveal an interest in dark nights of the soul and personal chaos. “I was a lousy librarian,” he says. “I loved to push books, but was too impatient for the work.” His American breakthrough, Out Stealing Horses, hit shelves in his native Norway in 2003 but didn’t appear here until last year. In fact, Petterson had seven critically acclaimed books before an American publisher decided to back him. When one finally did, it was the independent press Graywolf. “We were floored by the success of Out Stealing Horses,” relates Graywolf staffer Mary Matze. “Of course, we all knew that the book was special, but we were unsure what do about its quiet nature.” They’re banking on To Siberia to increase Petterson’s international stature even further. The author is equally optimistic. “It is always difficult to translate the tone,” he says, “but in some places it is perhaps better in English than Norwegian.”

— Drew Toal

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