I Refuse

An extraordinarily humane work…I Refuse will lodge in the heart and remain there -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
An exquisite story of a friendship formed and lost in a twist of fate * Scotsman *
A poignant novel about the bonds forged and broken between friends and family members * Independent *
A poignant, melancholic novel about the bonds forged and broken between friends and family members -- Lucy Scholes * Independent *
Relentless, often shocking, but always satisfying * Financial Times *
Relentless, often shocking, but always satisfying…telling each man’s story with brutal honesty and poignantly reinforcing a sense of existential malaise -- Matthew Bremner * Financial Times *
The suspense isn't in the plot but in the prose, with its extraordinary looping sentences -- Blake Morrison * Guardian Books of the Year *
Petterson’s signature technique lies in drawing the most zigzag line imaginable through narrative chronology but the effect is not of confusion, rather of a dense, layered complexity: it is the realist novel form’s mimetic faithfulness to life itself -- Neel Mukherjee * Guardian *
A strenuous examination of how grief reverberates down the decades -- Anthony Cummins * Metro *
A moving story of a group of lost souls, all struggling to make sense of their existence and exert some control over their lives * i *