Sunniva Lye Axelsen
Agnes is an artist with a confused view of the world. She swings between powerlessness and megalomania. She is yearning and merciless, very well dressed and constantly seeking recognition, which she never gets enough of. She dreams about a normal type of love with another human being, but is drawn irresistibly to the sadistic and horrible. Sanger fra Merkur is an uncompromising, brutal novel written in an outstanding beautiful language. 'The narrative voice is given an almost manic, suggestive language, bringing us close to the first-person narrator’s desperate state of mind.'FÆDRELANDSVENNEN
Stig Sæterbakken
Sauermugg is a novel filled with energy, a gripping tale about a person in existential crisis, characterized by great linguistic power, intense depictions of the mechanisms of power and love, and topped off with a great dose of pitch-dark humour. "The entire novel is light and elegant, with short and tenderly marked paragraphs, bouncing and consistent all at the same time, filled with howling black humour, abounding with witty and smart formulations given to the pen and tongue of a man that says "it has never fallen natural to me to be natural".STAVANGER AFTENBLAD "If you characterize the theme as a combination of Sartre and Camus (the sickness and the absurd) and Strindberg (the lhate of love and the hell of marriage), you have a good pointer about what this is all about. But Sæterbakken surpasses his predecessors in a big way. (...) You should read Sæterbakken for the sake of your lacking of peace of mind, and the pleasant discomfort it brings."DAGBLADET