RaveThe New York Times Sunday Book ReviewA fairly short novel with a timescape of half a century that seems to have left out nothing important is a bit of a miracle. I can’t see how exegetes, excited by unpacking fraught outcomes, can pry this one apart … Among the agreeable surprises of Per Petterson’s novel is the misleading suggestion that the modesty of his narrator’s voice foretells a tale of minor events, an account of the sort of photorealism that prevents anything from ever happening. In fact, the book contains some bold, convincingly stated coincidences well outside the range of our highbrow realists … The unsentimentalized remoteness of Trond’s place produces a vital tranquility.
