Petterson's spare and deliberate prose has astonishing force
The New Yorker
Petterson is a profoundly gifted novelist
- Richard Ford,
Is there a living writer better at conveying the disconcerting relationship between time and memory?... There is pleasure, too, in watching Petterson shift through the gears from pleasure to unease in one of those gloriously sinuous sentences that have become something of a trademark
- Adrian Turpin, Financial Times
Petterson is remarkably gifted
- James Wood,
Reading a Petterson novel is like falling into a northern landscape painting-all shafts of light and clear palpable chill
Time
Subtly incisive . . . Clean sentence after clean sentence, Petterson conveys both the melancholy and the demi-pleasurable sensation of being fundamentally untethered.
The New York Times Book Review
Readers will find that they're in the hands of a master whose quiet, unforgettable voice leaves you yearning to hear more.
The Boston Globe
Per Petterson stands unsurpassed among contemporary writers for existential truth-telling.
Financial Times
A rare insight into male vulnerability
- Jessie Thompson, Evening Standard
A tender portrait of grief, fatherhood and a life going to pieces from the bestselling author.
'Vivid and moving... It would be hard to find a better writer than Petterson' Irish Times
In 1992 Arvid Jansen is thirty-eight, divorced and paralysed by grief. More than a year has passed since the tragic accident that took his parents and two of his brothers.
Existence has become a question of holding on to a few firm things. Loud, smoky bars, whisky, records, company for the night and taxis home. Or driving his Mazda into the stunning, solitary landscape outside of Oslo, sleeping in the car when his bed is an impossible place to be.
Adrift and inept, Arvid feels his life unravelling. Is there any redemption for a man in his situation?
'Per Petterson writes about masculinity as well as anyone' Torrey Peters
'A rare insight into male vulnerability' Evening Standard