In the Wake

Per Petterson's novel about a man living in the aftermath of a sea disaster that killed his parents and two brothers has passages of great strength, but these appear only rarely from amid vast banks of fog. A novel of memory is always going to be one of imprecise, fleeting, and shifting images, but vagueness will wear down even the most sympathetic reader. In the Wake has been compared to Knut Hamsun's Hunger, but in that latter novel, also entirely interior, the central character is a beacon, not a cloud.