In this book, an unnamed narrator* remembers her girlhood in Denmark, on a farm in Vrangbaek near Skagen, where she and her beloved brother, Jesper, live with their hymn*-writing mother, carpenter father and serious grandfather.

    Jesper is very creative and different from others in the small community, and his sister follows him as they go around the town in moonlit and daytime trips.

    The family falls on hard times when their grandfather hangs himself, leaving behind the explanation, “I can’t go on any longer.” But the young girl lives through the changes in her life, including the new hatred* of the Nazi occupation of Denmark, by finding safety and hope in her deepening relationship with Jesper.

    She and Jesper sense there is no future in Denmark and want to go elsewhere. She wants to go to Siberia, he wants to go to Morocco. Jesper opens his innocent* sister’s eyes to the diminishing* possibilities and hypocrisies* of life in North Jutland. When the Nazis invade*, Jesper joins the resistance* and later flees to Morocco, leaving his sister behind. Instead of reaching her own goal of a Siberian journey, she accepts life as it is and gives up her dreams of travel. As the narrator looks back, she thinks about the harsh* realities of her life and the directions in which they led her.

    This is the second novel of Per Petterson, who won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his first novel “Out Stealing Horses.”

    Although Petterson addresses the impact* of WWII, writing about the resistance movement and the coexistence* of gentile and Jewish Danes, this novel focuses on the many little moments shaping the beauty and pathos* of a stagnant* life.(SD-Agencies)