It's Fine By Me: A Novel
As the new boy in high school, Audun refuses to remove his dark glasses (“I liked the distance they created”), and his wry, melancholy first-person, present-tense narrative nails how the teen’s defiance hides his fragility. Expelled from Boy Scouts, he knows he will never again join an organized group. Haunted by the death of his brother, Ergel, in a car accident, Audun remembers Ergel as “a pain in the ass,” never mind the priest’s “sentimental waffle” at the funeral. Like Petterson’s award-winning Out Stealing Horses (2007), featuring Audun’s friend Arvid, this story is as much about what is not spoken as it is about the angry daily detail (“It’s funny the things you don’t forget”). Much of the focus is on work, as Audun gets up early to run a paper route, then later quits school for a job in a printing press, until he is fired and cannot go home. The casual comments intensify the heartbreak: Why did his father leave? The spaces make the answers (or lack of them) universal. --Hazel Rochman