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    To Siberia
    To Siberia
    To Siberia
    Audiobook6 hours

    To Siberia

    Written by Per Petterson

    Narrated by Stina Nielsen

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In To Siberia, an unnamed girl-called Sistermine by her beloved brother Jesper-grows up in WWII Denmark, but dreams of escaping to the idyllic countryland in Siberia. The siblings' already uninvolved parents become even more distant after a family member's suicide. And following the German invasion of Denmark, the now teenaged brother and sister begin to grow apart as well. Jesper longs for the warm southern sun of Morocco, while Sistermine dreams of Siberia's peaceful plains. The siblings' divergent paths are underscored by the intense loneliness of their separation. As Sistermine hopes to be reunited with her brother, she realizes that her dreams of happiness may have passed her by.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateDec 5, 2008
    ISBN9781436197809
    To Siberia
    Author

    Per Petterson

    Per Petterson is the author of five previous novels, which established him as one of Norway's best fiction writers. Petterson worked as a manual laborer, spent twelve years as a bookseller, and was a translator and literary critic before becoming a full-time writer. His novel Out Stealing Horses won the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and was named one of the best books of 2007 by the New York Times Book Review and Time.

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    Reviews for To Siberia

    3.5/5

    200 ratings30 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Told from the perspective of an unnamed woman looking back on her teenage years in Norway, Petterson gracefully captures the bond between brother and sister as they navigate the suicide of their grandfather, neglect of their parents, corruption of their uncle, and the coming of Germans to their doorstep in the early years of World War II. Petterson's descriptive language had me remembering my own adolescence: nights when it was so pitch-black dark I couldn't see hand in front of my face. I remember waiting for the sweeping beam from the lighthouse before dashing ahead a few yards, only to stop and wait for the light again. Such is the fog that rolled off the Norwegian harbor, obscuring residents' view.As I have often said before, I have trouble with translations. Like this line, for example: "One day my road is suddenly blocked and the train trapped in a wall of Bibles" (p 54-55). Does someone want to explain that one to me? The protagonist has been talking about becoming a missionary and traveling to far off countries. Does she mean that religion dashed her dreams? To Siberia was so haunting. The language is sparse, but the unknown protagonist's love and unwavering devotion to her brother, even when he disappears in Morocco, is beautiful.
    • 4/5
      The story of a brother and sister in Denmark and their love for each other against the background of family conflicts, struggle and World War 2. I found the writing very engaging and loved the character development, but the novel feels unfinished.
    • 4/5
      Petterson is a maestro of mood & the landscape of the north (Denmark, Sweden, Norway) lends itself well to a pervasiveness loneliness. Even the intense connection(if not for their difference in age one might suspect them of being twins) of the protagonist & her older brother Jesper can't save them from distance & the finality of separation. Set in the 1930s and 40s, before, during & just after WWII. A restrained & constrained universe of sky, sea, snow, war(both personal & political) & silence. The deepest silence of all--family.
    • 5/5
      There is a kind of quietness about his novels which is pretty much his trademark. I cannot give this book less than 5 stars because of this.
    • 4/5
      This had an interesting aura about it, but the plot and characters wound up petering out and really disappointing by the end. There was a lot of promise in the beginning of something interesting, but it just didn't live up to the expectations.
    • 4/5
      A girl tells the story of part of her life from teens to 20s, during the time of WW II and afterwards. It focuses a lot on her relationship with her brother and her parents. Life isn't easy for her family. She doesn't entirely understand her family's behaviour (and so neither do we), but clearly the sins of the fathers are visited on the children...from generation to generation. I like Petterson's style; his appreciation of the subtle interactions between people, their observations of their environment. It's only a small novel and is fairly easy reading, except that the time jumps around a little which confused me a little (I'm easily confused!).
    • 4/5
      Sometimes a little bit too much, but still always interesting.
    • 3/5
      slow at first; jumped around a bit; but I like Petterson's stories because they take me somewhere.
    • 4/5
      Narrator's memories of her childhood in northern Denmark. She grows up in a cold household, but at least has her brother as a constant and loving companion until he has to flee. The descriptions of Denmark (and later, Norway, where she wanders after the German occupation) are stark and real, so that the landscape almost serves as another character. The story is icy, and heartbreaking, and empty of hope.
    • 3/5
      I fell in love with Per Petterson's writing when I read Out Stealing Horses last year. I forgot that I had acquired one of his earlier books, To Siberia, until I was organizing a shelf, and found it tucked away in the back.  I launched into this book, hoping to recapture what I loved so much in Out Stealing Horses.It's probably unfair to compare the two, but I was a bit disappointed in To Siberia. It was an average book - a story of a young Danish girl and her wild brother who grow up in a home without any nurturing or love. They had each other and a shared restless spirit. The girl - known only as "Sistermine" - wants to travel to Siberia - and her brother, Jesper, wants to escape to Morocco. After spending their impoverished youth in a small Danish village, the Nazis arrive, and Jesper takes up with the Resistance. The siblings are separated, and the girl (now a young woman) waits years to hear from her beloved brother again.To Siberia meandered and circled, and Petterson touches on certain aspects of the story - but only so lightly, like a painter dabbing with his brush. You get just enough before the story moves again. Sometimes this works, but for me, I wanted a fuller picture.What I did enjoy about To Siberia was what I learned about Denmark. Petterson offers so much - traditional food and drink, industry, villages, religion and education. I also was intrigued with Denmark's response to Germany's invastion during World War II - their sense of passivity and then impatience with the situation.If you haven't read Per Petterson, To Siberia is not the place to start. But if you have read his work, then give this slim book a chance and see what you get out of it. With any book that is translated, I always wonder if something got lost in the translation. Perhaps that's the case with To Siberia.
    • 3/5
      This spare novel begins in a small village in Denmark prior to World War II. The unnamed narrator is a young girl in a troubled and struggling family, whose parents are tolerant and benignly neglectful of her. Her older brother, Jesper, is her best friend, and she loves him unconditionally. The narrator is an excellent student, which earns her no praise at home, whereas Jesper is an indifferent student, but is passionate about the anti-fascist movement in Spain and becomes a committed and active socialist. Both siblings dream of leaving their stifling home and village; Jesper dreams about Morocco, and his sister wants to escape to the frigid solitude of Siberia.The Germans invade Denmark, and most villagers accept their presence. Jesper and others become active in the resistance movement, which ultimately leads to his separation from his beloved "Sistermine". After the war, the narrator moves, without a clear direction or sense of purpose, to various cities in northern Europe, in a search for something, or someone, that is not clear to her or to the reader, while longing for word from her brother. She has given up on her childhood dream of moving to Siberia, but she ultimately receives a letter from her brother, who has made it to Morocco, and plans to visit her soon.To Siberia was an interesting story, but I found the narrator and its characters to be inscrutable and of minimal interest, which makes this a marginally recommended read.
    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful loss of innocence book - after reading "Out Stealing Horses" I knew that I had to try Per Petterson again. This book intrigued me. I felt the loneliness, aimlessness and lack of center of the main character from early on. What I love so much about Per's books is the introduction to a part of the world that I have very little knowledge of... and the inner struggles of people like I rarely see. With this book, I learned more about Denmark... and about the soul of a human being who really wanted to be happy but just couldn't get there. Siberia, to me, was the symbol of the main character's yearning to escape. Her one anchor in life, her brother Jesper, held her from drifting away even when he wasn't nearby. I felt his presence throughout the book. I was mesmerized by this story - it was spare, simple and beautiful. No huge dramas or crisis (although I suppose you can call a Nazi occupation a crisis - but even this was discussed in rather banal terms) - just simple events told in a powerful way. I felt the destination reached at the end of the book in my heart.
    • 4/5
      I was excited to finally read this after finishing Out Stealing Horses. Per Petterson's writing style is melancholy and sparce, it often reminds me of Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Even though I enjoyed To Siberia, it seemed to follow the same formula of Out Stealing Horses. The story is told as a reminiscence. The main character is very close with a family member and the entrance of World War II permanently separates the two not by death, but by choice. I connected more to Horses because of the father/son relationship. The longing to go back to a moment of time before everything changed. In Horses, it was the father leaving during the war and then never returning. In this story, the main character Sistermine loves the cold and has the fondest memories with her brother. The cold, the snow, and the ice represents a pure youth that she longs to return. After things changed, she longs for Siberia so that she can return to that feeling. It also contrasts with Jesper's desire to move forward, to a life of adventure in the hot desert of Morocco. I loved this contrast in the story.The middle part of the story focuses more on Sistermine's relationship with her brother Jesper. The parents are neglectful and the siblings spend a lot of time around each other, to the point where some in the town gossip. Some of the scenes reminded me of the Cement Garden. The story is beautifully told and would be a great for book discussions. It delves into landscapes as characters, sibling relationships, innocence and World War II in Northern Europe. The last part ends tragically and I'm haunted by one of the last lines. At 22, I have nothing left to live for.
    • 4/5
      Petterson's icy prose is put to the test in this novel of the relationship between brother and sister set in various Scandinavian locales in the time surrounding World War II. The early chapters recount, in a cool, detached style, the childhood of the siblings, their strong relationship to each other and their otherwise lacking familial connections. Father is distant to the point of lacking in emotion. Mother's faith has gone a step too far so that she now spends her entire day playing piano and singing hymns, offering little to her daughter other than platitudes. The suicide of a family member haunts the narrator, but not in a way a reader would expect - it's not the fact of the suicide but the details, the rope swinging, the cows' breath steaming in the barn, that remain with the narrator.Then there is Jesper, the seemingly most emotionally well-rounded character, slightly (2 years) older brother to the narrator. While both children fantasize of escaping their bleak existence in Denmark - Jesper to Morocco and "Sistermine", the narrator, to Siberia, where though it's cold she has faith the homes and clothes are warmer. "Sistermine" attempts to keep up with her brother, but he is rambunctious and will not be held back from his dreams. He joins the Resistance and is soon wanted by the Nazi occupying forces, leading him to flee and separating him from his sister. "Sistermine" then spends several years wandering, seemingly lost without Jesper. In her ambition to reach Siberia, she first does so emotionally, becoming exiled from her family and becoming as emotionally distant as her father.The spare prose and cold setting can't help but illuminate the emotions, or lack thereof, of the characters, though this is a hallmark of most other Scandinavian literature I've read. Petterson's novel is almost impressionist in style, painting around the edges and revealing only precisely honed details at a pace the author chooses. If you enjoy novels of this type, such as Ishiguro's Never Let Me Down, you should give this novel a chance. While Ishiguro's book rises to the level of masterpiece due to its use of focus on character detail to reveal hidden truths about the nature of modern humanity, Petterson's explores the minutiae hidden in the connections between siblings and how world events impact them. This much tighter focus, and the emotionless prose, prevent To Siberia from reaching as lofty a status, though it is still highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      To be honest, I'm not quite sure what to make of To Siberia. Petterson's prose is as stark and beautiful as in Out Stealing Horses and again the setting is Scandinavia, but otherwise it is worlds away. I suppose it's not fair to compare this to OSH but my thought is that many are coming to it based on their love of OSH as I did. If you're looking for more of the same gorgeous spare prose, by all means pick this up. However, if you're looking for another book that leaves you feeling breathless and in harmony with the bigger things in life, this isn't it.This book is dark, cold and ultimately a bit hopeless in feel, much like it's unnamed narrator. You sympathize with her, to a point, certainly with the more difficult aspects of her childhood, but in the end she reminded me of Cathy from Wuthering Heights in that her behavior was maddeningly selfish and you just left the text glad to be done with her. Perhaps the best word for her would be "heartbroken". Her heart was broken when her brother Jesper left for Sweden abandoning her with their eccentric, remote parents. In return, she leaves home as he's about to return and wanders about, no more than using most of the people who cross her path with little concern for their feelings. This is a decision it seems she regrets for the rest of her life, and thus begins her tale with the happier memories of her brother. I felt there was a subtext here of an unnatural sort of love the narrator had for Jesper. There are moments in the narrative that suggest this: in the speakeasy dancing with him, she likes that the women who don't know who she is are jealous; when the self-appointed-Gestapo neighbor jokingly accuses her of sleeping with her brother, she overreacts; when she changes out of her wet clothes while visiting Jesper in the shack, she stops dressing and hugs him topless. Add that to her discomfort at his ease changing in front of her and (perhaps most importantly) that she never seems to enjoy a single sexual encounter in her life, and I can't help but think she loved him as an unrequited lover, not a brother. Ultimately it's this disturbing subtext that came away with me the strongest, and not the amazing skill of the writing. Which is a shame, because this really is an amazing work of both creation and translation.
    • 4/5
      I postponed reading this book when it arrived because I was in the middle of reading Astrid & Veronika, written by another Scandinavian born author. Having read Out Stealing Horses, also by Per Petterson, I was anticipating another dark, cold story....well, that and the name: To Siberia.This story fulfilled that anticipation. It is dark and cold. Narrated by an unnamed woman of mature age, she delivers a narrative of her childhood in rural, northern Denmark from the mid-1930's to young adulthood in 1947.Her childhood memories reflect the loveless marriage of her parents, cold hearted grandparents, and a loving older brother, Jesper. Their mother is an emotionally distant, devout, self-righteous christian and hymn writer. Their father is reserved but loving of his children, though Jesper, being a son, is the preferred child. Jesper is adventurous, humorous and generous in sharing his embrace of life with is younger sister, "Sistermine, the only name we are given for the narrator. He is also the still point around which these memories turn.The first section of the book deals with their childhood adventures, but gives glimpses of what is to become of the adults (parents, grandparents, etc.) Both children dream of lives far away from Denmark. Morroco for Jesper and Siberia for "Sistermine", who is always cold and believes that the homes and the clothing will be warmer in Siberia. At the end of the first section are the unexplained deaths of a classmate-competitor and WWII looming.The second part of the book moves to their adolescence and begins with the Nazi occupation of Denmark and Jesper's activities in the resistance movement. Although "Sistermine" is the top student in her class she is denied education beyond middle school by her parents, especially her mother. This section ends when the sister and brother are separated because of his resistance activities.The third section begins with the narrator's wandering through Norway, Sweden, and back to Denmark with the absence of her brother ever present. The story ends with "Sistermine" alone, pregnant, and indeed in exile. Not the geographic Siberia, but certainly an emotional one.There is beautiful prose in Per Petterson's writing. The web of his stories are loosely woven as a veil which allows the reader a glimpse into lives in another time, yet exploring emotions and circumstances that are surely a universal fabric of life. Especially to children who observe the lives, misadventures, and deaths of those around them with little background information or details which impart sense or predictability to those remembered situations.
    • 5/5
      I finished this yesterday with a sense of sadness, as it's the last of the Petterson books that I have. I know he's written more, but they are yet to be translated. This is an amazing book, and pretty much different from any of his other novels (or most fiction for that matter). Imagine placing four characters into a setting, describing the location, and leaving it at that. You are told of different things that happen, but from the outside. You really have no internal view of why they are behaving as they are. There's very little dialogue to clue you in, and most of the strange occurences come and go with no explanation. The details from place to place are incredibly vague, there are few references to their work, their daily habits, even their friends.For example, the two children, from childhood on, appear to parent themselves. Their father is extremely distant, and their mother is pretty much devoted to God and no one else. The brother and sister are extremely close, to the point that it crosses your mind that something may be off. But then again, they essentially have no parents, so all their interaction is with each other. They talk about a vague future but they never have a connection to the current, it seems. The isolation is unsettling.One thing this book really taught me was how ignorant I am about history from a perspective other than US History...this took place in Denmark prior to WWII and I had no knowledge of any of the activities that were going on before or during the war. Really good, although I still favor Out Stealing Horses.
    • 4/5
      This was my first experience reading Per Petterson and I found his writing to certainly be almost poetic, it had a sort of flow and descriptiveness to it that really transported me to the Danish and Norwegian locales in To Siberia. It was a slow start for me as the first part of the book introduces us to Jesper and his sister, whom we never learn her actual name but who is the main character throughout the book. The stories of the children's life in a seaside town in Denmark are enjoyable in themselves but together they seem to be disjointed and jump around in time which got a little confusing. Petterson paints a beautiful picture of the relationship between these siblings and what takes place when Jesper joins the resistance movement and flees his sister. The "meat" of the story was captivating and kept me wanting to come back for me but then again towards the end of the book I wasn't as attentive and the flow seemed to have been lost. Overall To Siberia paints a fairly dark and bleak picture of this family and their struggles but the writing seemed masterful and made the read quite enjoyable where perhaps a less talented writer would fail to capture my attention with the same story.
    • 5/5
      "To Siberia" is a stunning novel about the relationship between a Danish brother and sister. The setting is a fishing town during and after the occupation by the Nazis. Petterson's writing is absolutely poetic. His use of language illuminates this fairly dark story with light, the light of perfect metaphors and phrasing which tugs at the heartstrings of the reader. I strongly recommend this novel whose themes include: family, the many forms of love, loyalty, and the determination to follow one's dreams, or not. Read it!
    • 4/5
      I first encountered Per Petterson when I read his novel, “Out Stealing Horses.” I was overwhelmed by his prose and his character development and did not want the story to end. So I was eager to read “To Siberia.” Yes, again I experienced his wonderful way with words…the ability to create a scene that is so descriptive that you are immersed in the sensation. Yet, I wanted this story to end. It was almost too much for me. I was chilled to the bone by it…physically and emotionally. Set in a seaside village in Denmark during World War II and the German occupation, the main characters are in a situation that imprisons them. But they are also imprisoned by their sterile relationships. Early on, there is a suicide and I felt the despair and hopelessness of the character…but that sense of isolation, hopelessness and despair continued for me throughout the story. The story is told by a young girl, that you know only as “Sistermine” the endearing term used by her brother, Jespers, when they are together. Her relationship with her brother is the only connection she seems to have throughout the story. The chapters depicting their childhood together are precise and beautiful in conveying the tie that binds them. Later, when her brother leaves, you and Sistermine are lost, adrift in a sea of waiting that was never resolved for me. In the end, I closed the book with a heaviness that hung over me.
    • 4/5
      I love a book which has emotional depth. Not only does this book describe a very close relationship between “Sistermine” and Jesper, a sister and brother with parents to whom they feel distanced, but it does so in a particularly vivid setting. The author makes use of the natural beauty and cold weather of Denmark, and later Norway, to make the setting almost as alive as the characters themselves.The book is divided into three parts. The first part takes place before World War II with the siblings cavorting as mischievous youth. The second part is during the war when Jesper decides to leave Denmark quickly due to his political ideology and activity. The third part is after the war when "Sistermine" is waiting for her brother to return. For me, the book was really divided into only two parts. The heart of the book was its beginning. After Jesper left, nothing was the same. I was waiting, along with "Sistermine", for her brother to return quickly. Together these siblings had a beautiful and wondrous relationship, but alone "Sistermine" seemed lost and adrift.This is the first book I’ve read by Per Petterson, but I immediately fell into the rhythm of this Norwegian author’s lyrical writing. I look forward to reading more of his work.
    • 3/5
      All the elements are here...interesting, Scandanavian angst-filled characters, a setting of small-town Denmark in the 1930's, and yet somehow this fails to satisfy. If the narrator had been the Danish-resistance son rather than the daughter who always seems swept along but not really a part of the plot line I would have enjoyed this more. I never felt like I really completely understood what was happening. There were some probable translation glitches that did not aid my understanding, such as "make game of me," rather then "make fun of me." "Snob" and "slob" were often interchanged which was confusing. If you liked "Out Chasing Horses," you may feel disappointed with "To Siberia."”
    • 4/5
      OUT STEALING HORSES was one of my top picks when it was released here, and so I began reading TO SIBERIA with much excitement. Per Petterson is a writer of rare ability. His prose is so clear and crisp, so precise, as to be a sort of metaphor for the northern landscapes of his literary visions. The lyricism comes not from flowery word choices... on the contrary, Petterson eschews all such flourishes... but from his images and his tone. His voice is restrained, somewhat elegiac, and unmistakable. Pick any paragraph, they are all a pleasure to read.This book was written in 1996, before 2003's OUT STEALING HORSES, and it is interesting to see the writer's development. Whereas OUT STEALING HORSES takes place in Norway, this book is set in rural WWII-era Denmark. The narrator is an unnamed girl and explore her relationship with her older brother, Jesper. Jesper dreams of escaping to Morocco; the narrator longs for the cold clear openness of Siberia. And so Petterson hints that no matter how deeply these two are connected, their futures will separate them. The family is fractured -- the parents negligent at best, the grandfather commits suicide. And then the Nazi's arrive and all their lives are inevitably altered. The first half of the book is splendid, with profoundly moving scenes -- intimate and unforgettable. The second half, wherein the narrator wanders through various Scandinavian towns, is somehow less appealing, and I found myself thinking something was missing, some focus lost. Perhaps it was because, when the siblings separate, the book losses its central metaphor. On the other hand, the girl's loneliness and isolation, her inability to form human relationships, is well crafted and effective, even though, for me, it doesn't hold the power of the book's beginning. The end is one of those literary moments that feel achingly real, in that one wishes there was more to say and yet there simply is not. Petterson's enormous talent makes beauty out of the smallest details and tiny moments. It's a pleasure to read. If this book doesn't accomplish quite what OUT STEALING HORSES did, I can't fault it for that. It's still better than most books out there, and I can't wait to see what he writes next.
    • 5/5
      [To Siberia] by [Per Petterson] could be described as the story of a girl who is emotionally closest to her brother and, in some way, in love with him - if you take out the sexual connotations of that - and who has parents who are distant or become so by not standing up for her. He's not a perfect brother - he teases her by playing on her fears, at times. But he cares for her, and is willing to bring her along on adventures although she is younger, and most of all there is an understanding between them as they view the world, and turn to each other to see their understanding confirmed. The novel begins with a short scene of being afraid of a pair of stone lions along the route she is riding on her grandfather's wagon when she is about seven. It quickly advance to age nine walking along the same route with her father. In the midst of these memories you learn of the father's relationship with his father, and the pov character's ("sister mine" to the brother, not given a name) feelings about her father and brother and mother. The mother is the least dwelled upon, yet she has an enormous influence. The time is just before and just after WWII, and it takes place in Denmark and later in Norway. The war figures in the occupation by the Germans, and in the resistance in which her brother is involved, although the book doesn't deal with those events to a large extent, except as how they affect the family. One of the strongest scenes is her encounter with an official who has come to ask her about the whereabouts of her brother. The war is what leads to both of them leaving Denmark. Her brother goes to Africa and she goes to Norway. Though she does not see him in these years he is still present. The book ends a few years later, when I assume she is in her early twenties, and she returns home. All this is mostly plot, but what distinguishes the novel is the richness of the emotional layering that is expressed physically and in the voice of the characters. There aren't any caricatures in the work, even the mother who most nearly fits a type. It is told in the voice of an older woman, perhaps middle aged, whom sister mine becomes, but that voice is seldom visible. We don't find out about her life (unlike in [Out Stealing Horses] where that novel alternates between the older and younger versions of the pov character). Her presence only lets us know that sister mine survived to that age, and also just a little information on how she regarded her life. A wonderful book. I loved Out Stealing Horses and this book is as rich as that one, but also different. I am still absorbing it but it seems to me that the form is more open. This is one of two books written by a male in which I think that was creditably pulled off (the other being Sunset Song, and the rest of the series by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon. I think I will be rereading this book, and also using it as a writer to study how Petterson presents a scene and the character's voice.
    • 2/5
      I'm not sure why I finished this book. I guess I felt "I should". I had heard a lot of "important" reviews on his "Out Stealing Horses" novel, and for some reason, instead of reading that one, I chose this one. It never really went anywhere. I didn't particularly care about any of the characters. The Scandinavian place names were daunting (I realize it's not fair to pick on him because the cities within his home country are unintelligible, but it made an already difficult book transcend to another level). And now that it's over, I can honestly barely even tell you what the book was about. I was just so happy to be done with it.
    • 4/5
      The first book I read by Per Petterson was "Out Stealing Horses" and thought it was great. This book, "To Siberia", is almost as good with the same style and warmth and the wonderful descriptive background. I will have to go back and read his other books because he is becoming one of my favorite authors!
    • 5/5
      Couldn’t be happier that I snuggled in with this book over Christmas! With “Siberia” in its title, the reader should be well-prepared for a frosty novel. The novel’s settings in Denmark, Sweden and Norway will keep you putting logs on the fire. You’ll be in the skin of a girl who’s constantly cold, but her heart is ablaze with all kinds of passion – passion for her own strength as she pedals milk deliveries through her village, passion for her older brother as he leads an underground fight against the invading Germans, passion to take dashed dreams for an academic future and wring hope from her frozen landscape. Petterson’s prose is the warm vein that flows through this novel, the vein that pumps its characters full of life and makes this a novel that calls out to be read again and again.
    • 5/5
      How does it happen that I follow up one WWII novel with another? Unplanned, it just did. In Per Petterson’s novel, a woman of perhaps 60 looks back on her life and tells her story. The story especially of growing up as a young girl in Denmark before WWII, to her years as a young woman adrift in her early twenties. The story of her fathers struggles, failures, and her mother’s harshness. But especially of the relationship she had with her brother, Jesper. Though we never hear her name (she’s “sistermine” to her devoted brother), an emotional bond is woven between the reader and the young girl as she comes of age during the German occupation of Denmark during the war. While her brother joins in on the resistance, she holds back. While Jesper has dreams of Morocco, she envisions herself in Siberia.Reading Petterson (at least this novel), is like having someone read to you in a spellbinding voice. It’s transporting and lyrically poetic. Yet never obviously so. The prose is deceiving in that way - muted, understated - it never shows itself off. It’s not the words themselves so much as the rhythm and pace and flow and sound of the words. Several times the young girl, and later the young woman, expresses her dreams of Siberia, her desire to travel there. I slept, and I dreamed I was in Siberia. There were the great plains with unbroken lines, and a sky and a light as from the dawn of the world, and timbered houses and flocks of birds like a thousand flamingos that changed into seagulls when they took off and flew and filled the world before they dissolved and were gone…It’s no wonder that the girl dreams of “the great plains with unbroken lines”. Growing up in their strict, loveless and confinng household, she has to open up the possibilities of the future for herself in some way. As for the reader, Petterson transports us over and over again to the rugged environs of Northern Denmark (Jutland), to Oslo, to Copenhagen. And yes, even momentarily to Siberia and back again.The experience of reading To Siberia is contradictory. On the one hand, events do happen: tragic events, life changing events. On the other hand, the feeling is as if they happen at a remove - not just for the reader but to the character. This is what one might call a particularly Nordic view of life (melancholic Danes, and all that). Nothing much matters, it seems, and life is full of more of that nothingness.To Siberia is a novel of isolation. Of the great distances that divide us. It’s a spare and sometimes bleak novel of having to grow up without parental love and the consequences of that kind of emotional abandonment. Yet it’s always, always, hauntingly beautiful.
    • 4/5
      This is a bleak and dark book, the story is about a sister and borther growing up pre and during ww2. the story is told by the sister over time, the point changes in time, she is both in current time then she is telling the story when she is a old woman. she dreams of going to siberia, never makes it, he wants to go to morocco. he does go there and dies there. the only warmth in the novel is between them. while other characters have warmth and affection to give she never lets anyone in but her brother. a sad book
    • 4/5
      The newly released (in the U.S.) To Siberia, by award-winning author Per Petterson, is a poignant, almost desperate story of a young girl and her brother growing up in northern Denmark during World War II and the life-altering ramifications following the Nazi invasion of Denmark. The sparse, almost poetically written story is recounted by a 60 year-old woman looking back on her childhood and her special closeness to her older brother. Growing up in hard economic times in a remote part of Denmark with a family focused on survival left little room for love and nurture. The siblings learn to rely on each other instead and like all children growing up in small towns, they dream of the day they will leave: our narrator dreams of taking the Trans-Siberian railroad, while her brother longs for the day he can head off for Morocco. "...I do not know if I thought it then or several years later, I definitely can't have been more than twelve and Jesper was fourteen, but the cold down my back was unbearable, and I knew I would not always have to stand outside in the dark looking in at the light."Family tragedy forces the narrator to rely even more on her brother and later, as he becomes more involved in the Nazi resistance, his actions will lead to events that will change not only the directions their lives take, but also their perceptions of the world and the people in it. This is as much a tale of how events shape the person we become as it is a stark coming-of-age story.Concentration on the part of the reader is mandatory: time and place will change quickly, often within a single sentence. You will not find a comprehensive history of the Nazi invasion of Denmark here. The novel is more like a series of snapshots which, when pieced together, reveal the personal consequences of an historical event.If you are looking for a quick, easily digestible read this is not the book you are looking for. But if you are willing to put in the effort, you will be rewarded with beautifully written passages that will stay with you for a lifetime.