PositiveThe Irish Times (IRE)... translated into English with great flair by Ingvild Burkey ... Petterson describes in meticulous detail the invidious position Arvid finds himself in as an ex-husband and sometime parent ... The novel focuses...on Arvid’s marriage breakdown and his hapless parenting. It’s a strangely narrow viewfinder for a story with such a colossal event [the death of his family in a fire] at its heart. Only in the context of the writer’s wider body of work does it makes sense ... the latest instalment, while undeniably excellent, can at times feel like a partial telling of a bigger story. Line by line, page by page, it would be hard to find a better writer than Petterson. Men in My Situation is a vivid and moving account of Arvid’s struggle to survive life’s brutal blows.
