I Refuse

Starred review from February 2, 2015
This latest from the internationally acclaimed novelist (Out Stealing Horses) might be his saddest, most powerful take yet on families torn asunder, missed opportunities, lost friendships, and regrets that span a lifetime. As the story opens, Tommy, a successful financier, unexpectedly encounters his estranged childhood friend Jim, who is fishing off a bridge during Tommy’s early-morning drive. In chapters that switch among several narrators and periods (the 1960s, ’70s, and the present story in 2006), the history of Tommy and Jim’s relationship unfolds. Tommy grows up in a dysfunctional household in rural Norway, in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, and their business. Tommy’s father beats him and his three younger sisters daily; the mother disappeared two years earlier without a trace, although her fate is eventually revealed in a striking subplot. After Tommy stands up to his father, the four siblings are separated by the authorities. Having lost his family, Tommy and Jim become inseparable until a seemingly minor incident on a frozen lake one night during their teens forever changes their relationship. Set against a stark landscape, this is a brilliant, meditative story about how one small, impulsive act can have an irrevocable impact upon one’s life, as well as a rippling effect upon the lives of others.

Starred review from February 1, 2015
Norwegian Petterson (It's Fine By Me, 2012, etc.) shows his considerable gift for exploring the darker crevices of boyhood in this elegiac story of two long-estranged friends whose lives have not turned out as they expected. In 2006, Tommy and Jim speak briefly on a bridge in Oslo where Jim is fishing and Tommy is driving his Mercedes. While Tommy is a successful if lonely businessman, emotionally fragile Jim has not worked at his job at the Oslo Libraries for a year, and his sick leave has run out. More than 30 years ago, the two were best friends growing up together in the working-class neighborhood of Mork. Back then, Jim-raised by his devoted single mom, who taught religion and instilled in Jim the belief that "you had to make yourself worthy"-seemed headed for success. Tommy's childhood was a disaster-after his mother's disappearance in 1964, his father abused his three younger sisters until 13-year-old Tommy attacked him with a bat and his father disappeared, too. The children were sent to different homes. While living with kindly neighbor Jonsen, Tommy tried to maintain a bond with his sister Siri, although her heavily Christian new parents considered him a bad influence. In adolescence, Siri was no longer close to Tommy but began a romance with Jim when he started attending her high school. The triangular connections became complicated, but all three had a sweetness and innocence about them. Then one afternoon Jim had a moment of what he considered cowardice while skating with Tommy and never forgave himself. Going about what turns into a trying day for each in 2006, both middle-aged men are drawn back to memories of that earlier time and each other, exposing how the scars from their (and Siri's) pasts formed them. Don't expect redemption here, but hope for connection. Without pyrotechnics, Petterson brings his characters and working-class Norway vividly, even passionately, to life; days after they finish the novel, readers may still have dreams of ice cracking.

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November 1, 2014

These titles are true bookends, as the story collection Ashes in My Mouth was Petterson's debut in 1987 and I Refuse his latest novel, a huge best seller in his native Norway, sold to 16 countries so far. The story collection is set in the early 1960s and introduces Arvid Jansen, seen in subsequent Petterson works, including the recent I Curse the River of Time. In I Refuse, two men meet by accident after a dark incident on a frozen lake 35 years previously shattered their relationship. Then, Jim stood by troubled Tommy; now, Tommy drives a Mercedes, while Jim fishes alone. From the author of Out Stealing Horses, an International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2015
After the success of Out Stealing Horses (2007), a new Petterson novel is bound to be highly anticipated. And this story offers fans all of the author's signature moves, including a spare style, bleak setting, and intense focus on a boyhood friendship. An accidental meeting on a bridge sets off a torrent of memories as Tommy and Jim, who haven't seen each other for 35 years, remember their once-close relationship. A mother who abandoned the family and an abusive father have left their scars on Tommy, who has risen above his childhood difficulties to become a wealthy financial analyst but still feels deeply the absence of any real relationship in his life. Jim, meanwhile, came from a stable religious home, but a traumatic incident while out skating on a frozen lake with Tommy one night served to so destabilize him that he has been plagued by psychological problems ever since. Petterson evokes the frigid Norwegian cold and his characters' corresponding melancholy in clean prose, conveying how the absence of emotion offers no protection from life's vicissitudes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)