Do You like book To Siberia (1999)?
I can't help but think of the novel I read right before this one, which also had a brother-sister relationship at its core (Machine Dreams). I enjoyed both, though beyond the close sibling relationship in both novels (the closeness due, perhaps, in part to parents whose relationship is not a good one), a war intruding on a somewhat isolated community in each, and an important similar plot point, the time period and the writing are different. As I was reading, I was also reminded of this quote from Zadie Smith's On Beauty : "They [his siblings] were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away."Here, the narrator goes through her life, noticing what is around her, not connecting to others, missing her brother, though what is unsaid about that is what is the most poignant, as the feeling I was left with on the last sentence attested to.Though I liked this novel, I still prefer Petterson's Out Stealing Horses, a more mature, fuller work, over this one.
—Teresa
I adored this book. Fabulous writing - even better than Out Stealing Horses. I have added In the Wake by the same author, simply because he writes so well. Read this book. Read it soon. Read it now. This is one of those books that every second spent reading is enjoyable. It is about a family and the people making up this family. And it is about the wonderful strong relationship between brother and sister, a relationship that glows in the cold harsh Scandinavian landscape of the 40s. This relationship shines, bringing warmth to the cold, eccentric family of which the brother and sister were an integral part. Families, all of them, really are amazing and strange each in their own way.
—Chrissie
This story is even more poignant than Out Stealing Horses, and as beautifully written. Here is a passage to illustrate the writing:I cycle north at dust towards Kæret Beach past the marshes at Ronnene where the seagulls sit in long rows in the shallows beyond the reeds,and all the rows take off as I ride past, unfold like gray-white sheets and land again in the dim light that slowly fades and disappears towards Skagen. There are thousands of them. I hear their soft rushing and feel the wind in my face as if this were the last time I would cycle here in just this way, and I see myself from the outside as more and more often I do, in a film at the Palace Theater progressively pone row of seats farther back from the screen, on the same brown bicycle I have had for many years, and my hair streams back and at the same time almost merges with the advancing night, and I hear the creaking of my right pedal against the chain guard, squeak, squeak, again and again a thousand times, and my breath, puff, puff, quite alone with no other sound now the gulls are silent.The unnamed narrator is strong like Lisbeth in Stieg Larsson's, but not twisted. Her relationship with her brother Jesper is central to the story, even when they are apart: all other characters seem peripheral.
—Joan Winnek