It's Fine by Me
A Novel
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ISBN10: 0312595344
ISBN13: 9780312595340
Trade Paperback
208 Pages
$18.00
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
In It's Fine by Me, Per Petterson presents a fresh perspective of a youthful Arvid Jansen, the protagonist of his other novels in English. Arvid befriends a boy named Audun. On Audun's first day of school he refuses to talk or take off his sunglasses; there are stories he would prefer to keep to himself. Audun lives with his mother in a working-class district of Oslo. He delivers newspapers and talks for hours about Jack London and Ernest Hemingway with Arvid. But he's not sure that school is the right path for him and feels that life holds other possibilities. Sometimes tender, sometimes brutal, It's Fine by Me is a brilliant Scandinavian novel from the acclaimed author of Out Stealing Horses and I Curse the River of Time.
Reviews
Praise for It's Fine by Me
"The melancholy story, and the superb writing that propels it, are both raw and honest—the brutality of the father, the disregard of printing-press colleagues, the ugly street fights—and also deeply compassionate."—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a northern landscape painting—all shafts of light and clear palpable chill."—Time
"Petterson's youthful novel is an openhearted bildungsroman . . . His sentences yearn to fly away into poetry."—James Wood, The New Yorker
"Spare, slim, and haunting, It's Fine by Me . . . offers the same moody prose and brilliantly unsentimental character revelations that have made Petterson a literary star."—Caroline Leavitt, The Boston Globe
Reviews from Goodreads
About the author
Per Petterson, Translated by Don Bartlett
