I was fourteen and a half when the Germans came. On that 9th April we woke to the roar of aeroplanes swooping so low over the roofs of the town that we could see the black iron crosses painted on the underside of their wings when we leaned out of the windows and looked up.
In this exquisite novel, readers will find the crystalline prose and depth of feeling they adored in Out Stealing Horses, a literary sensation of 2007.
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. The sister dreams of escaping to Siberia, but it seems increasingly distant as she helplessly watches her brother become more and more involved in resisting the Nazis.
BOOK REVIEWS
Media Reviews
"Starred Review. The book builds up slowly, casting a spell of beauty and devastation that matches the bleak but dazzling climate." - Publishers Weekly.
"Norwegian writer Petterson is an outstanding talent. Highly recommended." - Library Journal.
"A spare, lyrical novel from Norwegian author Petterson...that possesses historical breadth and a remarkable sense of immediacy." - Kirkus Reviews.
Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Claire To Siberia Having taught in Siberia for six months I came to know its harsh cold intimately. Petterson's ability to evoke time and place brought me back to the realities of living in a place defined by its starkness and reactions to being occupied. This is... Read More
Rated of 5
by Ann Cold! The frigid landscape of northern Denmark figures prominently in this sparse and poetic book. And, although unfulfilled, the dream of the unnamed young girl who is the narrator and main character of the book is to go to Siberia - with it's clean,... Read More
The narrator of To Siberia is a young girl growing up in
German-occupied Denmark in the 1940s. Her parents remain passive and distant
toward her, so she is left to take her cues from her older brother, Jesper. For
all that he dotes on her, though, Jesper has perfected the art of bringing her
to the brink of panic with his high jinks, like the time he pretends to drown in
an old well. She is left yearning for what she calls "clarity and contrasts,"
and so the novel is stuffed to the brim with images of conjoined light and
darkness:
"Jesper used to have great fun sneaking after the lamplighter with a similar
pole he had made, and when the man in the black uniform had pulled one ring and
gone on to light the next lamp, Jesper scurried out of the shadows and pulled
the opposite ring. They went on like that right up to Nytorv. When the
lamplighter had arrived there he always turned to contemplate his work, for he
was the lord of light and darkness, and then the whole street might be pitch
black."
Yet for all its meditations on that crisp line between white and black in a
time of moral peril, the novel itself remains frustratingly imprecise. The story
moves forward haltingly, the setting is never fully conjured and, most
damningly, the first-person narrator never coalesces into a flesh-and-blood
person. There are a few fine scenes—Petterson mirrors to beautiful effect two
scenes in which the children stand outside peering into windows that frame
distinctly adult tableaus—but they never add up, and when the novel skips ahead
to the narrator's twenty-second year and her self-imposed exile in Sweden, it
loses all focus and momentum. Readers who eagerly pick up this novel in the
hopes of finding a worthy successor to the excellent Out Stealing Horses
will be disappointed (and, in fact, this book is not a successor; it was written
in 1996, translated into English in 1998, and republished now only to capitalize
on Petterson's newfound literary fame). - Amy Reading.
The information about To Siberia shown above was first featured
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