num_pages: 228
description: Ingemar copes with the terminal illness and death of his mother.Thirteen-year-old Ingemar Johansson is a survivor. Things have never been easy. But, he figures, they could always be worse.With his father usually away at sea, and his mother dying of tuberculosis and often too weak to care for him, Ingemar has spent much of his life in foster homes, or the Children’s Home, or with his grandparents – with whoever would take him. In this wry first-person narrative, Ingemar tells of his life with his aunt and uncle in Småland, where he goes to live off and on for two years, one before and one after his mother’s death.In Småland, Ingemar finds more of a family than he’s ever known, as well as a cast of comic village eccentrics, with whom he decides he fits in perfectly. There’s the tomboy Saga, who teaches him how to box and introduces him to the mysteries of female adolescence; and Manne, who has green hair because his inventor grandfather makes him bathe in a copper tub. Together with the people of Småland, we watch as Ingemar falls into one outrageous situation after another, always displaying irresistible humour and the fortitude of a true hero.In turns tragic and farcical, and imbued with an acute sense of the absurd, Ingemar’s story is one of a valiant, wacky, and often hilarious struggle to make sense of life and of his mother’s illness.
language: English
title: My Life as a Dog
titlecomplete: My Life as a Dog (Hundtrilogin, #1)
characters: Ingemar Johansson
genres: Fiction, Humor, Swedish Literature, Classics, Young Adult
ratings_count: 282
places: Sweden, Småland
series: Hundtrilogin
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux