I Refuse

I read Per Petterson's I Refuse this past week and enjoyed it very much.  Translated into English this book transported me to the suburbs of Oslo, Norway.  Petterson describes the highways, the bridges, the traffic and the countryside.  He spends  many words setting the scene which is good because the reader needs that time to figure out where the plot is going.  With the way this man writes, unremarkable details become magical. The story starts where two men meet on a bridge.  One man is fishing off the bridge and the other one is driving to work in his Mercedes.  The men have not seen each other in 35 years although they were best friends as children.  Then the story goes into their friendship and their childhoods and how they helped each other through difficulties.  The boys had a great reciprocal relationship.  One day an seemingly unimportant incident while skating on a frozen lake occurs.  The boys hear the ice creaking especially loud on this very cold night. It sounds like a gun shot.  Ice can do that when it shifts. Both boys are scared by the loud noise and they race for the shore.  One boy pushes himself forward by shoving the other boy back.  He makes it to shore first.  He apologizes.  The boy who was pushed is kind in his response but it doesn't matter because the boy who pushed him makes a mountain out of a molehill over his action and they are never close again.  Friendships are like that though.  Sometimes they fizzle out for no apparent reason.  I am a fan of Petterson.  I read his other book Out Stealing Horses and I liked that one too.