Echoland: A Novel

by Per Petterson

Overview

The shimmering, windswept first novel by the internationally acclaimed author of Out Stealing Horses.

Echoland is the powerful and emotionally resonant first novel from Per Petterson. Written in the mold of his early story collection Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, it features a young Arvid Janssen, who is now twelve, on the verge of his teenage years and beginning to understand more about the world and his place in it. Set over the course of a single formative summer, the novel captures a series of episodes from Arvid’s long visit to his grandparents’ home in Denmark. He rides his bike around town, befriends other children on the beach, fishes for plaice, and weathers misunderstandings with his mother and grandparents, all of which Petterson imbues with the hope and yearning that come with this stage of life. Echoland is an assured and poignant beginning for an author—and character—who would go on to be loved the world over.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644450765
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	02/01/2022
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	696,261
Product dimensions:	5.36(w) x 8.39(h) x 0.46(d)

About the Author

Per Petterson is the author of books including In the Wake, To Siberia, and I Curse the River of Time. Out Stealing Horses has won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize. The New York Times Book Review named it one of the 10 best books of the year. A former bookseller, Petterson lives in Oslo, Norway.

Editorial Reviews

Merging time and memory to reveal the trauma, confusion, and exhilaration of growing up, this coming-of-age novel proves that Petterson’s immense talent was on display from the very first.”—Library Journal, starred review

“In this slim work, Pettersen writes with minimalist reticence—a remark here, a detail there—to create poignant lyricism.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

★ 12/01/2021

Originally published in 1989 and appearing in the United States for the first time, this debut from Dublin IMPAC Award winner Petterson (Out Stealing Horses) follows Arvid Jansen, a 12-year-old boy from Norway. (He's seen as a grown-up in Petterson's forthcoming Men in My Situation.) While visiting his grandparents in Denmark, Arvid begins to notice complexities within his family. His grandfather, a woodworker, is forever strict and tight-lipped while his religious grandmother tends to sit, weep, and run her store. There are signs of his parents' troubled marriage, grief over the loss of a child, and catastrophic experiences during World War II. As the summer progresses, Arvid becomes aware of changes in his beloved sister, Gry, as she matures, and he experiences his own sexual awakening. Petterson writes like a jazz musician, in percussive, lyrical, vivid prose; describing the journey by boat from Norway to Denmark, he recounts the bounce of each wave and the smell of the sea air. Allusions to the characters' past lives and motivations appear throughout, but, effectively, much remains hidden. VERDICT Merging time and memory to reveal the trauma, confusion, and exhilaration of growing up, this coming-of-age novel proves that Petterson's immense talent was on display from the very first.—Jacqueline Snider, Toronto

Library Journal

2021-11-17
This new translation of Norwegian author Petterson's first novel—about a 12-year-old Norwegian boy’s summer holiday with his working-class family—sets the stage for many of his later novels.

As Arvid Jansen arrives in Sweden by ferry, he shows genuine excitement at returning to the familiar yet slightly exotic homeland of his mother—the heroine of To Siberia (2008)—where his grandparents still live, but his pure joy won’t last. Arvid appeared as a younger, generally happy child in Pettersen’s debut short story collection, Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes (2014). Here the tone is less coming-of-age than loss of innocence. Over the summer, Arvid’s awareness of adult issues and his own complex feelings grow and darken. With disgust he watches the attraction between his slightly older sister, Gry, and his friend Mogens blossom into teen romance. Arvid himself sees a couple making love at the beach and later has an unsettling, vaguely sexual interaction with the woman involved. Digging into the secrets surrounding his grandparents, Arvid becomes closer to his mother as he learns the facts behind the death of her beloved brother Jesper (also important in To Siberia), whom he resembles. On the other hand, he goes from allowing his father to hold his hand in public to ignoring his attempts at conversation to outright hostility. While the ending stirs a sense of dread about Arvid’s immediate future, readers of the subsequent, melancholic Arvid novels already translated into English know that he grows up to become a successful if tortured writer; those readers will be fascinated by how Pettersen has knowingly or unknowingly planted the seeds of the later works here, including the importance of boats, Arvid’s interest in American literature, and his horror of divorce.

In this slim work, Pettersen writes with minimalist reticence—a remark here, a detail there—to create poignant lyricism.

Kirkus Reviews