It's Fine by Me, Per Petterson

Per Petterson is a Norwegian writer translated into English, with this book originally published in 1992, and only much later available in English (translated by Don Bartlett in 2011). I stumbled across It's Fine By Me having already read his later novel, Out Stealing Horses (2003, with an English translation by Anne Born in 2005). Both novels are written the first person and feature young men facing a 'coming of age' moment in family life. The landscapes of both books is stark and cold. In It's Fine by Me, Audun is a teenager and struggling with the death of his brother, as well as a fragmented family life. His absent father is a drunk, and his mother hardly features. This is an account of his internal world, his friendships in and out of school, being an apprentice in a newspaper printery, which is a comic, intelligent section of the book, and finally, learning to face the death of his father. I wondered if Petterson had been examining the father-son dynamic over time in his writing since Out Stealing Horses tackles that theme too. These books are pretty dark. Families appear broken and full of secrets. Young men struggle with violence and mental health problems. But they are also very beautiful and absorbing stories. As well as that, often, translations interest me. Two different translators here capture the essence of Petterson's writing (so far as I can discern) and show remarkable consistency in their style, though Born has translated three Petterson books thus far. Petterson has won and been nominated for several prizes: see http://perpetterson.com/