Linda says this " is a dark, brooding novel but with a fine, thin, persistent theme of hope that life's better possibilities are just around the corner..."

“Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a northern landscape painting—all shafts of light and clear palpable chill.” —Time

Fans of Per Petterson’s other books in English will be delighted by this opportunity to observe Arvid Jansen in his youth from a fresh perspective. In It’s Fine By Me, 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 novel from the acclaimed author of Out Stealing Horses and I Curse the River of Time.

Linda says:
"It's Fine by Me by Per Petterson, is a dark, brooding novel but with a fine, thin, persistent theme of hope that life's better possibilities are just around the corner, waiting for Arvid Jansen (Norway's Holden Caulfied) to believe in them and in himself. This book is a nuanced observation of the pain and disappointments of growing up from this one bright and bruised young man's point of view. It is a book about the ordinary, yet crushing losses we all incur and the decisions we make over and over again to pick ourselves up and continue forward. Petterson is a master at a kind of understated power, and this earlier novel of his is well worth the reading."