A review by shimmer
To Siberia by Per Petterson

4.0

As atmospheric, melancholy, and meditative as Out Stealing Horses and In The Wake, but I found To Siberia a bit more obtuse (which is not a complaint). A number of reviewers have called the later sections less satisfying, and suggested that the brother/sister relationship at the heart of the novel ends too early, but I had the opposite reaction -- as much as I enjoyed that relationship's developing complexities as the characters moved from childhood to maturity in the shadow of war, the novel really came together for me only after the unnamed sister is left to wander alone. So much of the novel concerns men (fishermen, soldiers, fathers, brothers) leaving women behind and unable to follow, either geographically or culturally. Through that lens, Sistermine's drifting at the end of the novel -- and the fact that unlike her brother, she never gets a name beyond the possessive "Sistermine" -- became less about her own rudderlessness and more about the limits she's given by a world her desires are too big for.