It's Fine By Me - Softcover

"· an intriguing story featuring all of the Petterson quirks ― charm, melancholy, loneliness, the rifts between parents and children, the bonds between siblings and friends" (Reading Matters)

"Beguiling and beautiful... It's a gripping and subtle coming-of-age story, ripe with melancholy...a graceful and moving novel" (Daily Telegraph)

"This is a sharp, tough and often movingly observed story about growing up." (Kate Saunders The Times)

"Executed with not only a magical attention to detail but also with heart-swelling affection... page after page of clear, glitchless and truthful writing" (Neel Mukherjee Financial Times)

"A brilliantly vivid piece of storytelling" (Mary Crockett Scotsman)

On his first day of school, a teacher welcomes Audun to the class by asking him to describe his former life in the country. But there are stories about his family he would prefer to keep to himself, such as the weeks he spent living in a couple of cardboard boxes, and the day of his little brother's birth, when his drunken father fired three shots into the ceiling. So he refuses to talk and refuses to take off his sunglasses.

In his late teens Audun is the only one of his family who remains with his mother in their home in a working-class district of Oslo. He delivers newspapers when he is not in school and talks for hours about Jack London and Ernest Hemingway with his best friend Arvid. But he's not sure that school is the right path for him, feeling 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.