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It's Fine by Me

by Per Petterson, Don Bartlett (Translator)

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 316 ratings · 87 reviews

The moving story of a young man's life from an international literary master.

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...more

Hardcover, 208 pages

Published November 3rd 2011 by Harvill Secker (first published 1992)

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Sep 05, 2012 Jeanette rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: all-fiction, scandinavia, av

What was it like to be a teenager in Oslo in 1970? For Audun Sletten, it's not a particularly pleasant life. He's a sullen young man, prone to drunkenness and apathy, and already quite defeated for one so young. We learn some of what made him that way as he alternates between present and past tense, telling stories from his 13th year in 1965 and his 18th year in 1970.

I have very much enjoyed some of Per Petterson's other novels, but I had to force myself to finish this one. The prose is up to Pe...more

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Jul 29, 2012 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you use Ernest Hemingway’s criteria – “all you have to do is write one true sentence”, Per Petterson is profoundly gifted. I’ve marveled at the authenticity of his other books, particularly Out Stealing Horses and To Siberia. This one is newly translated and actually precedes the others; it was written in 1992.

It’s a melancholy coming of age story and it helps to know that two years before he wrote it, Petterson’s parents and brother were killed in a Norwegian ferry tragedy. Likely, the autho...more If you use Ernest Hemingway’s criteria – “all you have to do is write one true sentence”, Per Petterson is profoundly gifted. I’ve marveled at the authenticity of his other books, particularly Out Stealing Horses and To Siberia. This one is newly translated and actually precedes the others; it was written in 1992.

It’s a melancholy coming of age story and it helps to know that two years before he wrote it, Petterson’s parents and brother were killed in a Norwegian ferry tragedy. Likely, the author is channeling the sadness and alienation and he does it very well.

As in other Petterson books, the story runs forward and back in time. We meet the 13-year-old narrator Auden Stetten on his first day in a new school. Despite the headmaster’s urging, he refuses to remove his sunglasses, claiming he does not want to show his scars. In that one simple scene, the reader learns a lot about Auden: that he is self-protective and secretive and that he may carry scars that make it impossible for him to reveal himself to others. Put another way, he’s sort of a “shady character.”

Nothing all that much happens; this is not a book for fans of linear plots and action stories. Instead, it’s a deep look into the mind and heart of a boy growing up in Norway and as in previous books, the cold and sometimes unforgiving landscape is very much part of the story.

The writing style goes from sparse to lyrical and back again as the story runs through some familiar Petterson themes: the yearning and rejection of connection, the need to make it on one’s own terms, the tough emotional road to growing up. Behind it all is the terror of an abusive father and the true scars that abuse leaves behind. Combined with the wrenching home scenes are poignant ones: at one point, Auden runs away and is taken in by a gentle farmer named Leif where he experiences tenderness. As readers, we know Auden can’t stay there forever but it’s an unsettling contrast about what could have been…and what is.

For fans of Per Petterson, it’s worth mentioning that Arvid – who appears in later books – is cast here in a supporting role as Auden’s one true friend. For those who enjoy intricate portraits of characters who are evolving into maturity, this is a very worthwhile read.

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Aug 17, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The setting of this novel is working class Oslo, Norway and the story, in its broad description is a coming-of-age tale of two boys, Audun and Arvid, who meet on Audun's first day of school. Audun has a tough persona, one he may not even be totally aware of cultivating. On the very first day of school he refuses to take off his sun glasses, telling the principal that he has scars around his eyes.

The book opens in 1965 and is primarily about the years of 1965 through 1970, though not in sequentia...more The setting of this novel is working class Oslo, Norway and the story, in its broad description is a coming-of-age tale of two boys, Audun and Arvid, who meet on Audun's first day of school. Audun has a tough persona, one he may not even be totally aware of cultivating. On the very first day of school he refuses to take off his sun glasses, telling the principal that he has scars around his eyes.

The book opens in 1965 and is primarily about the years of 1965 through 1970, though not in sequential order. The boys like the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin. They have the names of their favorite rock stars engraved on their boots. Audun is a loner and befriending Arvid is a big change in his life.

Audun comes from a very violent and dysfunctional family. His younger brother drowned two years ago when the car he was driving drove into the water. Audun's mother has recently left their alcoholic father who has been cruel and violent to everyone in the family. She now has a friend who comes over on Sundays to listen to opera with her. Audun's sister is involved with an abusive boyfriend.

This is not a book where a lot happens externally. It is a series of thoughts, feelings and inner experiences. Both of the boys read a lot and are interested in the socialist movement of the time. Ironically, Audun wants to be a writer while he is also contemplating dropping out of school. He loves Hemingway, Tolstoy, Gorky and Jack London. As he argues to himself, not all of them finished school.

The writing is poetic and strong. Speaking tangentially about his father Audun says, "If you're an alcoholic you're out of control. If you have no control, you are finished. Then you spend the rest of your days walking through the valley of the shadow of death. You are the problem no one wants to solve."

The book has some great humor in it. I loved the part about Henrik, a student who is failing at French but has a teacher that is too hard of hearing to recognize that Henrik is babbling rather than speaking French.

There is quite a bit about the political situation in Vietnam and the civil rights movement in the U.S. As Audun says, "I am not an idiot, I know about the napalm in Vietnam, I know about Wounded Knee and the Ku Klux Klan; for as long as I have lived I have seen the race riots on TV. They shot Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. I have read Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice and felt the flames of his hatred. But there is something about these people. They are for real. They step out of the shadows and set out on journeys never to return."

Though non-linear, primarily devoid of action, and mostly inner-directed, this is a very interesting book. It appears to be partially auto-biographical with Arvid representing the author. I recommend this book to those who enjoy character-driven novels with frank and heavy prose. At times, there is a lightness to the writing and humor in the story, but by and large, this is a heavy novel, one that looks at the darker side of the human spirit.
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Oct 22, 2012 Larissa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, norwegian, scandinavian-nordic, for-review, books-i-brought-to-iceland

Review published on Three Percent, October 16, 2012: http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...

***

On an early morning in Oslo in 1970, Arvid Jansen shimmies up his high school flagpole and replaces his nation’s flag with that of the Viet Cong. Confronted by the headmaster in front of his classmates, Arvid takes the opportunity to expound on the evils of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam and Norway’s complicit foreign policy, all the time being observed from a far corner by his good friend Audun Slett...more Review published on Three Percent, October 16, 2012: http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...

***

On an early morning in Oslo in 1970, Arvid Jansen shimmies up his high school flagpole and replaces his nation’s flag with that of the Viet Cong. Confronted by the headmaster in front of his classmates, Arvid takes the opportunity to expound on the evils of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam and Norway’s complicit foreign policy, all the time being observed from a far corner by his good friend Audun Sletten. “I guess it’s all very important,” Audun shrugs, “but I am up to my neck in my own troubles, and it almost makes me want to throw up.”

Frequent readers of Per Petterson have by now come to know Arvid Jansen rather well. In typical Petterson fashion, Arvid’s life has been examined in alternating atemporal versions set forth in In the Wake and, most recently, in the masterful I Curse the River of Time. Arvid is often the vehicle through which the author explores and recasts episodes of his own past—“[h]e’s not my alter ego, he’s my stunt man,” Petterson stated in a 2009 interview with The Guardian. Vulnerable, self-absorbed, and made miserable by hindsight, Arvid is an incredibly sympathetic character. If for no other reason than this, then, English readers should be delighted to now have access to one of Petterson’s early novels (first published in Norway in 1992): It’s Fine By Me.

Arvid is a prominent character in the novel, but it isn’t his story. Rather, it’s that of his troubled friend Audun, a young man who, with his “real problems”—a violent and drunken father who is, luckily, often absent; a beloved but drug-addicted younger brother, killed in a car accident; a lonely single mother struggling to support her children; and numbing jobs with long hours and little respect—is the actual embodiment of the working class hero that Arvid has so frequently wished to be. But as seen through Audun’s eyes, there’s nothing in the least romantic about his situation in life.

“It’s fine by me,” (reminiscent of Elliot Gould’s own cynical chorus of “It’s okay with me,” in Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of The Long Goodbye) is Auden’s go-to retort, forced in its apathy when pretty much everything that he remarks on is anything but. In fact, Audun cares a great deal about what happens around him—cares about his sister who he thinks may be in an abusive relationship, cares about a neighbor whose brother is getting into drugs, cares about Arvid and his family, cares about doing well in school, and literature, and Jimi Hendrix, and woodsy hideouts where he felt safe as a child. But isolating himself and not caring—or at least giving the appearance of not caring—is far easier and exposes him less.

Although there actually is quite a lot in the way of plot happenings, It’s Fine By Me is a rather familiar, somewhat anticlimactic coming-of-age narrative where the ‘what’ matters far less than the ‘how.’ This is by no means Petterson’s strongest novel, nor should it really be expected to be—it was, after all, one of his first. But although the flashbacks and overlapping memories fold together less seamlessly than in other Petterson novels, although the emotional pitch is generally less subtle (lots of capital letter exclamations when people are angry), and the visual metaphors more overdetermined (a beautiful runaway horse, turning just before it knocks over young Audun and Arvid), the novel is still compelling, and sometimes even quite funny. (A scene in which Audun and Arvid have to figure out how to put gas in Arvid’s father’s car is particularly delightful.) Petterson’s characterizations are always both sharp and empathetic, his prose measured, poetic, and visual. One feels connected to Audun—truly concerned for him—and yet, due entirely to Petterson’s writerly sleights of hand, the reader can distinguish between what has become entirely compressed and unified in Auden’s mind: run-of-the-mill teenage angst and real, emotional (and physical) trauma.

Through it all, Petterson allows for a quiet hopefulness, the possibility a better future for Audun. There is resonance in the clichéd assurances of a sympathetic neighbor: “You’re not eighteen all your life,” he tells Audun. “That may not be much of a consolation, but take a hint from someone who’s outside looking in: you’ll get through this.” (less)

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Jul 28, 2012 Newengland rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finished-in-2012, contemporary

OK, so I love this book and yet hold back a star. Tough love, call it. And logic, really, considering that Petterson's OUT STEALING HORSES took me by storm. This book came before that one. In fact, Graywolf Press will be publishing four from his backlist: two novels, one short-story collection, and one essay collection. So, yeah, I love this book, but realize it does not quite reach the peaks that HORSES did.

That said, I genuinely admire the autobiographical character here. Audun Sletter's hards...more OK, so I love this book and yet hold back a star. Tough love, call it. And logic, really, considering that Petterson's OUT STEALING HORSES took me by storm. This book came before that one. In fact, Graywolf Press will be publishing four from his backlist: two novels, one short-story collection, and one essay collection. So, yeah, I love this book, but realize it does not quite reach the peaks that HORSES did.

That said, I genuinely admire the autobiographical character here. Audun Sletter's hardscrabble life is covered from preschool to age 18. He lives at home with his mom, older sister, and doomed younger brother. His Dad, no stranger to the bottle, visits when he's in the mood to punch a few easy marks. A lone wolf, Audun has but one good friend whom he sees only seldom: Arvid Jansen. The two of them have this way about them, this subterranean understanding that Petterson captures through dialogue. It's no small feat.

In her note to the reader at the start, Graywolf publisher Fiona McCrae writes, "[It's Fine By Me] has a strong, suspenseful plot, memorable teenage characters, and a moody, Norwegian setting." Check and check on numbers two and three, but not so much on number one, unless "episodic" is a qualifier you'd use for strong and suspenseful plots. It's really more of an Impressionistic work, with points of Audun's life drawn in brief, deft strokes. Back up a bit and you get the picture.

Though there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to genders and reading (especially considering how much more flexible women are compared to men), I'd say this is more of a man's book. Add a layer to that if you're a man who once dreamed of being a writer (and I assume that includes many, many men who love to read).

Through his many heartbreaks, fist fights, and rolled cigarettes, Audun has one constant -- books. He's especially drawn to books about writing and writers. MARTIN EDEN, for instance, the lesser-known Jack London work that every wannabe writer reads as a teenager (if you're late for this bus, it still stops for the hungry). And A MOVEABLE FEAST, Hemingway's non-accent-on-fictional account of his writing days in Paris during the 20s ("Hunger is good discipline," and all that). Audun also puts you on to Norwegian authors you've never heard of (unless you've been listening carefully), like Helge Ingstad, author of The Apache Indians, a book in Audun's hand on the last page. Given all this book love, you'll be Audun's bud before you know it.

It's Fine By Me does not have the sweep and descriptive flourishes of Out Stealing Horses, but its spare, direct writing and character-rich details will take its prisoners. Audun is one for feigned indifference, and you'll think you are, too -- until you reach the last page. Really. Decent endings are so hard to write, even for the very best like Tolstoy (who sucked at endings). Petterson nails it here. A perfect convergence of plot (such as it is) and character (Audun's sphinx-like one).

Yep. By the end, you'll feel like you're bidding farewell to an old friend, a kid just like you once were, a kid who might've understood you like no one else had you been lucky enough to know him. That's the feeling that carries the day with this book. Maybe it'll carry you, too.

This review is from an ARC. Actual release date: Oct. 2, 2012.(less)

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Oct 14, 2012 Bettie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: hardback, paper-read, norway, autumn-2012, library-in-norway, published-1992

Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett

This must be a back number as the copyright is 1992. No dedication or front quote, just straight into the opening:

I was thirteen years old and about to start the seventh class at Veitvet School. My mother said she would go with me on the first day - we were new to the area, and anyway she had no job - but I didn't want her to.

An early work that didn't work for me. The writing is good but the subject matter left me cold even though I could relate to be...more

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May 12, 2013 Rick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

If Hemingway has a successor, it wasn’t Mailer or Raymond Carver. Nor is it Tom McGuane, though there are points superficial and substantial to be considered for McGuane, but it is Per Petterson. The Norwegian novelist is spare, unsentimental, precise, vividly descriptive without being florid or sentimental, and blessed with the gift of voice so his dialogue is authentic, unique, and natural. Like Hemingway, Petterson imbues his characters with a stubborn heroism that lives in understatement.

The...more If Hemingway has a successor, it wasn’t Mailer or Raymond Carver. Nor is it Tom McGuane, though there are points superficial and substantial to be considered for McGuane, but it is Per Petterson. The Norwegian novelist is spare, unsentimental, precise, vividly descriptive without being florid or sentimental, and blessed with the gift of voice so his dialogue is authentic, unique, and natural. Like Hemingway, Petterson imbues his characters with a stubborn heroism that lives in understatement.

The protagonist of this story is a teenage student. He and his family, minus their violent father, have moved to a new town. The boy, Audun, aspires to write. He lives in an interior world that he shares with a friend but no one else. With everyone else he shares his sense of disaffection, his being in but not of their world. He wears sunglasses when he enters the town’s school and makes up stories about why he needs to. The stories are obviously not true but in his desperate need to separate himself it doesn’t matter that they are untrue: go ahead call my bluff says the dark shimmer of his glasses. Audun wants out into the wider world of adventure he finds in the stories of Jack London. He delivers newspapers. He quits school and gets a factory job. The chip on his shoulder is worn for himself and selected others. There are verbal rows and physical conflicts. Audun can take his lumps, taught to do so by his father, whose shadow hangs like the long stripe of an evergreen on the edge of an open field.

Petterson succeeds in making Audun credible, intriguing, and a figure of admiration, as he makes the out-sized decisions of the prematurely adult. A randomly selected description: “I walked out into the sunshine with my dark glasses on. I couldn’t see Leif anywhere, but there was an old man in overalls standing in the yard. He was thin as a rake and tall, the overalls hung off his shoulders like a flabby tent, and he was holding his hands against the small of his back, gazing up in the air, so I too looked up, but there was nothing there, just air. Then he was aware of me, and he turned on his heel, and we stood up straight staring at each other, and he shook his head and stroked his chin and made a friendly gesture. I did the same, and when he smiled his face split in two, and he was off across the yard and behind the barn.”

Calling It’s Fine By Me a coming of age story is to unfairly pigeon-hole it. It’s that and more. It is a compelling story of longing, of finding one’s way, of the complex interior worlds of those who are lost to themselves and so to others but only just so. In a conversation with his friend early in the novel, Audun admits that his father is not dead, which his friend assumed because Audun never mentioned him. “So now I’ve said it. I shouldn’t have, because then I may have to tell him more. Arvid is my friend, and now he looks at me, and my mind goes dim, and all around me it’s getting dark, it’s late in the day and no longer possible to see between the trees. It’s all shadows. I turn my back, but that doesn’t make it better, a chill runs up my spine, and I can’t stand still. I start to move down the rock, jumping from boulder to boulder as fast as I can, and Arvid is behind me. ‘Hey, you, wait, for Christ’s sake.’ But I don’t.”

Petterson knows that people like Audun carry a worldly wise sensitivity and understanding that gets them into the narrow space between despair and hope, between peace and conflict, between caring and not caring, between, really, life and death. Brilliant.(less)

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Mar 25, 2013 Tuck rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: europa

when i was a kid i remember seeing a sort of tv news report or short documentary [about maybe 1972?] about teen drinking and drugging and rock on maybe denmark or sweden. the permissive society allowed young people to drink openly and have long hair and such and i thought that was great, it was what me and my friends were doing too, but NOT openly. we hid in the bushes and backways [sticking out as sore thumbs probably too]. this novel [per petterson's first?] is about those times, set in blue c...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Literary Review The rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Per Petterson
It’s Fine by Me
(Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2012.)

By Jeanne-Marie Jackson

"It's Fine by Me" was reviewed in The Literary Review
"Loss Control" Fall 2012
www.theliteraryreview.com

In a 1981 essay that tries to salvage Realism from indefinability, literary critic Marshall Brown describes the technique of silhouetting. What makes the reality aesthetic feel so real, he says, is what he calls “the form of figure against ground.” He means that in big novels by Great Writers about small t...more Per Petterson
It’s Fine by Me
(Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2012.)

By Jeanne-Marie Jackson

"It's Fine by Me" was reviewed in The Literary Review
"Loss Control" Fall 2012
www.theliteraryreview.com

In a 1981 essay that tries to salvage Realism from indefinability, literary critic Marshall Brown describes the technique of silhouetting. What makes the reality aesthetic feel so real, he says, is what he calls “the form of figure against ground.” He means that in big novels by Great Writers about small things, the individual emerges like a cameo against a social backdrop. It is just this sort of contrast between character and milieu that I thought I was encountering in the brief first chapter of Per Petterson’s novel It’s Fine by Me.
We are introduced to our narrator, a thirteen-year-old boy named Auden Sletten, as he strides onto a playground and towards the seventh grade. He is avowedly alone. The scene is set for maximum distinction between this Oslo coun- try kid and everyone else: “Through the windows I could see faces,” he observes, “and those sitting on the inside pressed their noses against the panes and watched me standing in the rain.” This description is typical of Auden’s working-class Norway, where groups seem somehow impenetrable; they’re set off against the vivid locales of adolescent isolation that form the story’s spine. The schoolyard is just the first in a series of dim and dusty environments, wrested by Don Bartlett into pointed English prose: a dark bedroom, an old car, a cabin made of cardboard in the woods.
And yet Auden’s alienation, his place as a cameo, gives way to a more crucial dimension of this not-quite-coming-of-age tale. The novel reads more as series of incandescent portraits of other estranged people. Auden comes to the fore but then recedes, evacuating his own sense of self to act as a stage for the stories around him (at one point we read that he does “not know who it is that he sees” in the mirror). His narrating consciousness foregrounds an astonishing range of characters—from a drunk, absent dad to the lame farmer who briefly fills his shoes—who emerge as if from a tableau as Auden shines a spotlight upon them.
The trajectory of Auden’s growth is disrupted at every turn, so that we’re forced to focus on the people who form him rather than on the process of his formation. We meet Auden at a disaffected thirteen and leave him at a slightly less disaffected eighteen, but see him at various points in between and as a young child being beaten by his father. In addition to the yoke of a few recurring characters like his best friend, the aspiring writer Arvid, these unplotted points are united through grief and the kindnesses that assuage it. Auden’s younger brother drives a car into a river, but when Auden himself almost drowns he is rescued by a couple of generous strangers. In this way what seems like a desolate book is redeemed as an archive of luminous moments, some painful and some good.
In the last chapter of It’s Fine by Me Auden’s father also dies, years after his younger son, and Auden is literally left to pick up the pieces. “There wasn’t much,” he admits. “His knife, a few keys he had kept for long-forgotten doors, two fifty- kroner notes and a small black and white photograph.” The woman in the photo is an old girlfriend who had gone to school with his parents, and Auden can do better than just carry her crumpled image in his pocket. Instead, he allows his mother to tell the story of three people who loved each other a long time ago. In this way, Petterson avoids the cynicism that a chronological narrative of Auden’s wising up might have conjured. Life is often bad, but It’s Fine by Me also allows space for when it isn’t.(less)

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Feb 23, 2013 Robert rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's Fine By Me by Per Petterson, the Norwegian novelist, made me think that all books about adolescence are the same book: they're about the painful process of adolescence coming to an end. There doesn't have to be a strong plot; in fact, a strong plot gets in the way; adolescence is a series of events full of feeling that don't add up. Dream all you will, life isn't going to turn out that way. And if it does, your train wreck is coming later in life…probably around thirty.

The gift offered by t...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Gail added it · review of another edition

'He stands in front of me, his mouth wide open, and I really feel like punching him. But of course I can't, and I don't know where to put my hands, but I will hit him unless I can think of something very quickly. I don't want to beat it and leave him here alone, and so I do the only thing I can think of and put my arms around him, pull him close to me and hold him tight. Very tight. He goes as stiff as a fence post and gasps for air, and only then do I realise that Arvid loves his father. It has...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Kathleen Hagen added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-audio-books

It’s Fine by Me, by Per Petterson, Narrated by Adam Verner, Produced by Dreamscape Media, Downloaded from audible.com.

This is a coming-of-age novel. We watch Audum from the age of 13 to age 18. He is the next door neighbor of Arvid Jansen. At 13, he loses his younger brother to a drowning accident. He and his sister and mother leave his father, a cruel alcoholic, and move to working class Oslo. He meets Arvid here as they begin school together. But Audum is always fractious. To begin with, he wo...more

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Dec 07, 2012 Russell George rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Do you know that feeling when you really like a particular author, no matter what s/he writes? That there’s something about their style that makes reading them somehow more personal, more meaningful, than other writers? Well, it’s pretty rare, but that’s how I feel about Per Petterson. I think it’s the way he uses the present tense to create just the right about of tension, alongside the very ordinariness of his stories. This was about a troubled teenager from the home of a physically abusive fa...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Julie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I enjoyed getting to know Auden as he tries to grow up while dealing with an absent, alcoholic, physically and mentally abusive father, as well as the death of his younger brother. The book wobbles back and forth from the present time to past events, and thus we get a look at Auden's troubled growing up. His life has not been an easy one. In fact, it has been as bleak as the well-described working class neighborhood that he lives in.

I couldn't help but root for Auden, because in spite of his "I...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Cynthia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-in-2012

Nature and Literature

“It’s Fine by Me” is a coming of age story. Audun, the growing boy, has had a tough Norwegian upbringing. His dad is a violent alcoholic who mistreats him, his brother and sister and their mom. The book begins when Audun is thirteen in 1965 just as society is undergoing seismic shifts. Audun is lucky he has one true friend in Arvid. They talk about books and Audun borrows classics from Arvid’s father’s bookshelves. Arvid’s dad also becomes a little of a substitute role model...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Heather Noble rated it 4 of 5 stars

It may well be fine by you but it shouldn't be I wanted to shout at Audun as he tells the story of the 5 years of his life from 13 to 18.
Audun is loveable, determined, intelligent, vulnerable, uncompromising, and shyly sensitive.
His life at home is unhappy for many reasons and his best relationship is with his friend Arvid whose family also provides reading materials such as Jack London and Ernest Hemingway. Audun comes to measure his life and writing credentials by these two authors; unsurprisi...more

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Oct 23, 2011 Marleen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Copy received from and reviewed for Bookgeeks

Set in the 1970’s in Norway, this is the story of Audun Sletton.
When the book starts Audun is 13 years old and facing his first day in a new school where insists on keeping his sunglasses on all day and refuses to talk about where he came from and his past.
Five years later Audun is the only one of his siblings still living with his mother in a working-class district of Oslo. He is in his last year of school but not sure if that is the place for him. A...more Copy received from and reviewed for Bookgeeks

Set in the 1970’s in Norway, this is the story of Audun Sletton.
When the book starts Audun is 13 years old and facing his first day in a new school where insists on keeping his sunglasses on all day and refuses to talk about where he came from and his past.
Five years later Audun is the only one of his siblings still living with his mother in a working-class district of Oslo. He is in his last year of school but not sure if that is the place for him. Audun has one good friend, Arvid and shares with him a love of reading and socialist political ideas.
Slowly Audun shares some memories of his life so far with the reader, if not with those around him. We learn about his violent father who disappeared five years ago but could be anywhere, even on his way back to his family. We also find out about Audun’s younger brother and older sister and slowly start to understand Audun’s problems with his life and the world around him.

This is a very good coming-of-age novel. In many ways Audun is a typical teenager, trying to find his place in the world and to understand the actions of those around him. But there are issues in Audun’s life that make him a far from average teenager. The violence that were a dominant feature in his early life, and a devastating loss make him feel more alone in an incomprehensible world than the average teenager does.
The reader won’t always be able to understand or approve of his actions and decisions, but will at all times sympathise with him and will him on, hoping that he will come out at the other side to a brighter future.
At times violent and at other times tender, this is a powerful story, both heartbreaking and uplifting.
I feel this would make a wonderful book for discussion since not everything is explained in detail and several issues are left open to interpretation by the reader.
This is a story that will stay with the reader for some time after finishing the book, with a main character that will provoke all sorts of emotions. This is a book well worth the 4.5 star rating I give it.
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Mar 11, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: library-book-or-loan, norway

It’s Fine by Me (1992) is an early novel – only just translated into English in 2011 – by the author of the superb Out Stealing Horses, which in 2007 won the IMPAC and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. (It was also shortlisted in 2008 for the Best Translated Book Award but this one is translated by Don Bartlett, not by Ann Born, who died in 2011).

When I first began reading It’s Fine by Me, its adolescent narrator immediately put me in mind of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, but...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Kristine Brancolini rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm starting to feel like a grade inflater; everything I have read lately gets 4 or 5 stars. But I think I'm just getting better at picking what to read. I have so many titles on my to-read list that I don't want to waste time on books I don't like. Anyway, I had never heard of Per Petterson or this book, It's Fine By Me. I saw it at the library and picked it up. I visited Norway last summer and I have been reading Scandinavian mystery writers, but had not seen many other books by Scandivanian a...more I'm starting to feel like a grade inflater; everything I have read lately gets 4 or 5 stars. But I think I'm just getting better at picking what to read. I have so many titles on my to-read list that I don't want to waste time on books I don't like. Anyway, I had never heard of Per Petterson or this book, It's Fine By Me. I saw it at the library and picked it up. I visited Norway last summer and I have been reading Scandinavian mystery writers, but had not seen many other books by Scandivanian authors, except for the classics by Knut Hamsun. I was looking for something more modern.

This latest book by Per Petterson is wonderful. A Norwegian coming-of-age story set in 1970, the narrative also flashes back to 1965, the summer that the protagonist Audun Sletten was 13. This was a pivotal year. His father left the family and he ran away from home for a short time. During this time he stayed with a farm family that provided well-needed security to Audun.

It's hard to explain why this book is so engaging. Audun and I are approximatley the same age and he reminded me of some of the boys with whom I grew up in Southern California. Working class boys longing to be artists and poets. Audun read many of the same books we were reading, Martin Eden and A Moveable Feast. Like Hemingway Audun has a notebook in which he attempts to write "one true sentence." He hasn't done it yet, but if Audun is a stand-in for Per, eventually he mastered it. Petterson's writing style reminds me of Jack London and Hemingway, but Audun is a modern hero. A working class boy with the soul of a poet and a violent and alcoholic father at home. Close to graduating from high school Audun drops out of school and starts working at a large industrial printing plant. The work is difficult and dangerous. It reminded me of the jobs my husband had as a college student -- working in mills and factories -- the kind of job that sent him scurrying back to college in the fall, thankful to have another future ahead of him. When the book ends, Audun's family seem to be on the mend and I felt hopeful that he might return to school. And find a career as a novelist. (less)

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Mar 20, 2012 Mish rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Mish by: Kaylene

Shelves: fiction, library-friends-books, translated-fiction, 2011

Audun is an 18year old boy and at his last year of school. He drifts though life not really knowing where it’s headed, and think that everything is fine. Audun is sensitive boy, and a little reserved, in that he likes to keep his childhood secret to himself. But every so often Audun has these unexpected outbursts of anger, and you’re baffled by what has triggered it off. It’s obvious that not everything is fine, but you do slowly come to understand what is troubling him as he gives you brief gli...more

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May 03, 2013 John Edward rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Audun Sletten is the young adult Holden Caulfield of Norway. The story chronicles Audun's transition from teenager to young adult, his first real job (night shift), the absence and subsequent death of his father, and the probable remarriage of his mother. Told first person, the narrative unfolds in and around Audin's home town of Oslo. His brother has died in an automobile accident, his sister is living with her newborn and a boyfriend who thinks he is James Dean, and Audun is living with a moth...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Jacki rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fiction

*Check out http://www.infinitereads.com for other reviews and sundry thoughts!*

Although he is best known for his International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson's backlist of Norwegian-published novels has provided Graywolf Press with a rich vein of spare, beautiful prose alive with the soft light and sharp chill of Scandinavia. Originally published in Norway in 1992, two years after the death of Petterson's parents, brother and nephew in a fire, this coming...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Bonnie Mccune rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A small treasure of a book, “It’s Fine by Me” gifts the reader with more of Petterson’s excellent, spare, clean writing that somehow simultaneously conveys unspeakable emotion. Auden Sletten, an eighteen-year-old resident of an Oslo suburb, has not has an easy life; and the story provides insight into why through occasional flashbacks. His alcoholic, abusive father fortunately abandoned the family some years back, leaving Auden, along with his mother and siblings to make their own rocky road. Bu...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: norwegian

Another interesting book by this outstanding Norwegian author. Audun, a working class boy living with his mother after his father, an alcoholic, has abandoned the family, his younger brother has drowned, and his sister has left to live with her (no good) boyfriend. But somehow this is not a depressing, bad luck story - Audun clearly feels loved by his mother and is struggling to have a sense of self. This is really a coming of age story, a boy in trying circumstances defining himself, his friend...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Jud Barry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A young Norwegian man comes into his own, leaving behind his adolescence and a past dominated by an absent, alcoholic, (gypsy?) father. The style captures the caginess of the central character very well: salient events of the past get unwrapped slowly and gradually.

At least one plot artifact--an accordion--remains partly, mysteriously, swathed. A suggestion of gypsies?

This is heavy-industrial, newspaper-heyday Norway (a printing press figures prominently). Geography and local culture don't seem...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Carl rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Subtitle: disjointed vignettes of an unhappy adolescence.

The author can write well, and clearly evoke a mood, or at least a bleak one, as this was unremittingly in that vein. And other than that, there didn’t seem to be any unifying theme, let alone plot. Perhaps the only completed circle was the nasty, drunken father, but we certainly don’t get a feel for how the main character will deal with his immediate or farther future, and even less so for the others: his mother, his sister, his friend.

I...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Barksdale Penick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Norway in the 1960's, like much of the Western world, was in flux, and out hero grew up in the midst of the change. But not all had changed, and I loved the observations of the old men waiting from noon for the bar to open at 1, shuffling along the sidewalk pretending to be doing something else. Even though our hero was a typical teen rebel, I was struck by the fact that the protrayals of most of the older people, apart from his father, were quite sympathetic. Maybe that just shows it was writte...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Kevin Young rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am sure Per Pettersen is a good writer, and whilst I enjoyed this book to a degree, it's just that maybe he's not the writer for me. I found it difficult to work up any real enthusiasm for the story at first; the writing style just didn't do enough to grab my attention. I got more drawn into the whole thing in the second half, and fairly whizzed through it. Though if I am honest that was due more to the desire to get onto my next read, rather than any sense of losing oneself in the story. Ove...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Caitlin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: free, first-reads, first-reads-received, favorites

***This review may contain spoilers, but I'm not promising anything.***

I received this book free through a Goodreads FirstReads Giveaway.

I had never read any of Per Petterson's work before getting my hands on a copy of "It' s Fine by Me" so perhaps that's why it took me as long as it did to get into this book. I started reading it when I was stuck in bed sick, however, so that may have something to do with it as well. Whatever it was, I had a hard time getting into the story at first, but thankf...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Leigh Newman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Novels about teenager angst can sometimes sound, well...teenage. Not so in the case of It's Fine by Me by Norwegian writer Per Petterson, who previously wrote the haunting, spare Out Stealing Horses. In this newly translated novel (courtesy of Don Bartlett), he follows the struggles of Audun Sletten, a 13-year-old boy who supports his mother by delivering newspapers. Having recently moved to town, this family of two remains slightly lost. Audun makes one friend (a classmate), as does his mother...more

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About Per Petterson

Petterson knew from the age of 18 that he wanted to be a writer, but didn't embark on this career for many years - his debut book, the short story collection Aske i munnen, sand i skoa, (Ashes in the Mouth, Sand in the Shoes) was published 17 years later, when Petterson was 35. Previously he had worked for years in a factory as an unskilled labourer, as his parents had done before him, and had als...more

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Quotes from It's Fine by Me

“There are some things with alcohol you must never do. You must never drink alone, never drink on Sundays, never drink before seven o'clock and if you do, it has to be on a Saturday.” — 1 person liked it

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