{"id":23310,"date":"2018-01-15T23:48:14","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T03:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=23310"},"modified":"2018-01-15T23:48:14","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T03:48:14","slug":"per-petterson-echoland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2018\/01\/15\/per-petterson-echoland\/","title":{"rendered":"Per Petterson: Echoland<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

Echoland<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Per Petterson (1989, Ekkoland<\/em>)<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (2016)<\/span>
\nHarvill Secker (2016)<\/span>
\n144 pp<\/span><\/p><\/h3><\/div>

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No one could hurt him, no one could reach him, he could go wherever he wanted. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

T<\/span>hree stars for this early coming-of-age novel, but five for the author's oeuvre, and my review will focus as much on Echoland<\/em> in the context of the wider work as it does on it as a standalone piece.<\/p>\n

Per Petterson is one of my absolute favorite authors and this is his 8th book to be translated into English, all of which I have read. However, it was his first novel and second book after the story collection Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes<\/em>\u00a0to be written in the original Norwegian, and as with that book it is an early work not as stylistically developed as his later masterpieces from To Siberia<\/em> on, notably the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize- and Impac- winning Out Stealing Horses<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For my own benefit, as much as anything, his fiction is as follows, with the dates of English translations following:<\/p>\n