Jan Grue had just become a father when he inherited a stack of his childhood medical records. Following a diagnosis of spinal muscular atrophy at the age of three, the raft of doctors' notes, clinical descriptions and case histories defined his body as defective and his future as bleak and limited. They conjured a childhood nothing like the one he remembered, that failed to anticipate the life he lived now. I Live a Life Like Yours is Grue's beautiful, groundbreaking search for a literary language that could better tell his story. Writing with clear-eyed wisdom and bracing frankness, Grue folds insights from art, film and literature into an expansive account of who he was expected to be, and who he became. If it is a story of frustration with negligent institutions and the pain of stigma, it is also a story of the potential of acceptance and the gift of family. Unflinching, yet always compassionate, I Live a Life Like Yours is a fierce and tender reckoning with what it means to live as a vulnerable body.

"A narrative that is compelling, unconventional and powerfully told... His genius becomes evident in his mastery of language" - New York Times

"Stunning... a restrained, dazzlingly intelligent and self-excavating examination of what it has meant to be disabled and visibly different... a meditation on what it is to be human, what it is to be lonely and full of hope and yearning... I started off by writing everything that most profoundly moved or excited me in I Live a Life Like Yours into my notebook, but quickly found I was copying out the book verbatim... It makes you read carefully and think feelingly and I'm grateful that it is now in my head and heart, working change" - Observer

"A witty account of surviving in a vulnerable body, and a powerful examination of the meaning of disability... a quietly wonderful memoir" - Independent

"A quietly brilliant book that warms slowly in the hands. Artful" - New York Times

"[Grue's] book-which doubles as a work of literary criticism and cultural history-is, yes, an elegant meditation on what it's like to be a body that does not resemble most other bodies, but it's also about aging, parenthood, memory, academia, and love. A tart and spare palate cleanser" - Vulture

"Sometimes you read a book where after a chapter or two you have to stop highlighting the bits that floor you or else you'll underline the entire text - and this is one of them... a profound, contemplative work about life with a disability, and life as a human being" - New Statesman

"This is a brilliant memoir - lyrical, fragmented - frank about love, about independence and interdependence, about the clinical gaze and internal ableism, about disabled anger as well as disabled joy" - The Bookseller

"I recommend Norwegian writer Jan Grue's I Live a Life Like Yours... the writing and translation by BL Crook are strong and spare, very different from Knausgaard's account of a Norwegian youth but similarly shaped by immersion in philosophy, cultural history and literary criticism" - Irish Times

"In this beautifully painted memoir of an ordinary life, a man of many parts emerges, flourishes, comes of age. A stunning autobiography of a man who refuses to see himself as others see him" - Professor Bill Hughes, Glasgow Caledonian University

"A sensitive examination of the meaning of disability... Frank and often moving... Absorbing, insightful reflections on being human" - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"It would be hard to read this book and not empathise profoundly with its author. It is perhaps the perfect book to read if you are struggling for whatever reason to make sense of what it means to be disabled" - Literary Review

"Grue elegantly flows between memoir, essay, and intellectual discourse... He brilliantly articulates what it's like to be "erased and rewritten," and, more poignantly, what it's like to obliterate the narrative one's been handed. This stunning work isn't to be missed" - Publishers Weekly, starred review

"This book is a heartfelt and insightful story about accepting one's own body and limitations, and learning to love life as it is while remaining open to hope and discovery... Stunning writing with life-affirming reflections" - The Fountain

"In the vein of Maggie Nelson and Anne Boyer, Jan Grue combines ideas and stories to explore living with one's body's limitations. It's an important addition to the literature of disability" - Book Riot

"An exploration of identity, of premises, boundaries and transgressions in which Grue opens up a broad horizon in language that is free and refined. The outcome is literature of relevance and greatness" - Dagsavisen

"Great language, enormous skill and a great deal of reflection. This is Grue's story, but it's also a tale of what it is to be human... A powerful and important book" - Romerikes Blad

"Jan Grue blends elements of both fiction and non-fiction and the result is a vital, meditative and learned investigation of what it means to be a different person in the world, at the mercy of a body that does not function as normal bodies do... Grue delivers original observations and a supreme degree of reflection" - Dagsavisen

"The book will, in all likelihood, linger as a milestone signifying that a new maturity is reaching autobiographically based literature in Norwegian non-fiction, too" - Morgenbladet

"A restrained, dazzlingly intelligent and self-excavating examination of what it has meant to be disabled and visibly different, not "normal"... stunning" - Guardian