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A review by kimbofo
Men in My Situation by Per Petterson
5.0
The King of Melancholia returns with what may possibly be his best novel yet.
In Men in My Situation, we meet a recurring character, Arvid, who is 38 and newly divorced. (He was a teenager in Echoland; 37 and heading for divorce in I Curse the River of Time; and 43 in In the Wake.)
He’s a mildly successful writer, but things aren’t going particularly well for him. He’s alone and adrift, desperately missing his three daughters, and clinging to the routines that mean something to him: driving his old Mazda around the quiet streets of Oslo (and sometimes sleeping in the car), hanging out in bars and drowning his sorrows in booze, and occasionally going home with women for meaningless sex.
The breakdown of his marriage haunts him. But overshadowing this is a fog of grief: a year earlier his parents and two brothers died in the 'Scandinavian Star' ferry disaster and he’s wrestling with how to process this loss. (Petterson himself lost his mother, father, young brother and a niece in the disaster, and it’s a recurring episode in the Arvid novels.)
There’s not much of a plot, but this is not unusual in Per Petterson’s work. Instead, we get a deeply introspective narrative about a divorcé grappling with fatherhood and newfound circumstances, of a man who is acutely aware of his weaknesses but not confident enough to overcome them, someone who wants to be a better person but isn’t sure it’s worth the effort.
For a more detailed review, please visit my blog.
In Men in My Situation, we meet a recurring character, Arvid, who is 38 and newly divorced. (He was a teenager in Echoland; 37 and heading for divorce in I Curse the River of Time; and 43 in In the Wake.)
He’s a mildly successful writer, but things aren’t going particularly well for him. He’s alone and adrift, desperately missing his three daughters, and clinging to the routines that mean something to him: driving his old Mazda around the quiet streets of Oslo (and sometimes sleeping in the car), hanging out in bars and drowning his sorrows in booze, and occasionally going home with women for meaningless sex.
The breakdown of his marriage haunts him. But overshadowing this is a fog of grief: a year earlier his parents and two brothers died in the 'Scandinavian Star' ferry disaster and he’s wrestling with how to process this loss. (Petterson himself lost his mother, father, young brother and a niece in the disaster, and it’s a recurring episode in the Arvid novels.)
There’s not much of a plot, but this is not unusual in Per Petterson’s work. Instead, we get a deeply introspective narrative about a divorcé grappling with fatherhood and newfound circumstances, of a man who is acutely aware of his weaknesses but not confident enough to overcome them, someone who wants to be a better person but isn’t sure it’s worth the effort.
For a more detailed review, please visit my blog.