The New York Times – Thomas McGuane: This short yet spacious and powerful book ? in such contrast to the well-larded garrulity of the bulbous American novel of today ? reminds us of the careful and apropos writing of J. M. Coetzee, W. G. Sebald and Uwe Timm. Petterson?s kinship with Knut Hamsun, which he has himself acknowledged, is palpable in Hamsun?s ?Pan,? ?Victoria? and even the lighthearted ?Dreamers.? But nothing should suggest that his superb novel is so embedded in its sources as to be less than a gripping account of such originality as to expand the reader?s own experience of life.