Girl, 1983

Linn Ullmann has mastered the art of seeing into the dark mysteries that make us who we are

Yiyun Li

Among Norway’s contemporary writers, Ullmann might be the finest sentence by sentence

John Freeman, LitHub

Ullmann is masterfully precise with language, pinning a wealth of detail in a simple phrase

Time Out

Ullmann’s grasp of the ambiguous natures of her people and her understanding of their background is admirably strong . . . she has a keenness of ear and eye, and a sharpness of mind, that is all her own

Independent

Linn Ullmann’s new novel, Girl, 1983, is both beautiful and unsettling. A slow exploration of the narrator’s past becomes a quiet and disturbing interrogation of the world’s treatment of young women. Here beauty is a dangerous possession, drawing its owner into silence and complicity with those who would harm her. Brava to Ullmann for bravely taking on this dark subject, one which permeates our culture

Roxana Robinson

Linn Ullmann's writing, already distinct for its rare moral clarity, attains a new authority in Girl, 1983. It is the authority of focus, of a grip on life that grows more tenacious as its scope determinedly narrows. In the manner of Annie Ernaux, Ullmann uses the act of attention as a weapon against indifference. It is as though, by reconstructing the disorder of certain realities, she is able to confer sanity on them. Yet there is also a brightness and generosity to her work that seems to turn its themes - the powerlessness of youth and femininity, the intermingling of memory and shame - inside out

Rachel Cusk

An engrossing, intimate narrative . . . award-winning novelist Ullmann meditates on memory, anxiety, and loss in a disquieting tale . . . In precise, lyrical prose, Ullmann creates a captivating portrait of a woman in search of herself, caught in a spiral of fear and loneliness

Kirkus