October Child

"Praise for October Child ""October Child is stunningly frank and urgently told. Linda Boström Knausgård writes with what appears to be a willingness to expose herself utterly. This makes for a painful and powerful book that asks complicated questions of its readers and acknowledges the impossibility of simple answers. An extraordinary work."" --CHRIS POWER, author of Mothers: Stories ""(Boström Knausgård's) first openly autobiographical book becomes an act of self-examination powerful enough to match if not surpass those of her ex-husband's."" --The Guardian ""October Child is a bold book, not in its openness but in its aloofness, in its faithfulness to literature and language rather than to reason and science. Against the great story of psychiatry with its simple, ready-made answers, Boström Knausgård insists on the irrationality in humans and on the suffering of each individual."" --Gothenburg Post ""Linda Boström Knausgård's October Child took my breath away. I can't recall when I last read a novel that struck me and held me fast in this manner."" --Expressen ""October Child is a desperate reckoning with psychiatric care. But it is also an ingeniously composed novel with mercilessly beautiful language."" --Sydsvenskan ""As expected, language that is self-assured and lyrical, yet in an unexpectedly acute and polemical tale.""--Kulturnytt P1 ""Linda Boström Knausgård's prose moves seamlessly and evocatively between worlds. She writes as if in a dream--it's both eerie and gripping."" --Aftonbladet ""Linda Boström Knausgård writes with her usual linguistic momentum, there's a kind of inviting energy in her voice. She balances her desperation with poetic precision and makes the urgency real for the reader."" --Svenska Dagbladet ""Linda Boström Knausgård has the rare ability to place herself at the very center of emotions and make the past seem completely present."" --Göteborgs-posten ""Linda Boström Knausgård creates images and scenes with a vibrant presence and her language often takes lovely poetic turns."" --Dagens Nyheter ""Intense and painful."" --Jönköpings-Posten ""Linda Boström Knausgård's language is like water: occasionally it pours, sometimes it solidifies to ice. As a reader, I am frozen in her despair."" --Borås Tidning ""In a turmoil of the darkest emotions, one marvels at the clarity of the prose. Throughout her internment, the author asks herself a question: Will I be able to write again? Do I have what it takes? The simple and quick answer to that question is, Yes."" --Östersund Post ""A bloodcurdling memorial work, as if secretly written from a bedside. It is a difficult read, painful because it is at once so insightful and despairing, so hopeless, and written with a frightening anger that spares no one, least of all the narrator. It is less literary than Boströms Knausgård's previous work; and perhaps precisely because of this, in its vulnerable non-perfection, it is so overwhelming. One cannot forget it."" --SVT Nyheten Praise for Welcome to America ""A piercing story of a girl who responds to trauma by mustering the most powerful weapon available to her: silence. (...) melodic, mythological, transformative, a testament to literature's powers..."" --Vanity Fair ""...a taut portrait of how difficult it can be to reconcile ideals about faith and family with their messier realities. An intense, recursive book that evokes the chill despair of a Bergman film."" --Kirkus Reviews ""The narrative is borderline stream-of-consciousness, with hallucinations mingling with reality, forcing readers to constantly question what they are told. Knausgård is an impressive writer, and she has created a unique, powerful lead in a world all her own."" --Publishers Weekly ""In striking prose, Knausgård examines the power of silence and the complicated reality of family. A singular and thought-provoking story with a child narrator you won't soon forget. I look forward to Knausgård's next book!"" --Bookriot ""Welcome to America is a slim, beautiful act of grace, a novel that moves easily through the shadows and patches of light within its characters, through truths half-glimpsed and barely acknowledged. It will remind readers of the intimate force of Ingmar Bergman's films, secrets and lies in close focus, haunting and desperately true."" -- Robert J Wiersema for The Toronto Star ""Sparse, sleek and exacting...[Boström Knausgård] provides a haunting and evocative portrait of the process of trauma and the awareness of personal isolationism, even within the structures of faith and family."" --Alice Martin for Shelf Awareness ""Boström Knausgård's careful exploration of mental illness is restrained and entirely unsentimental. She passes no judgment on her characters, whose pain she reveals through Ellen's musings. Her prose is unobtrusive in its simplicity and minimalism. The result is both powerful and lyrical, qualities beautifully rendered by translator Martin Aitken's concise, pared-down English text.""--Deborah Bragan-Turner for Words Without Borders ""Knausgård's novel...gives voice to the uncontrollable, horrifying aspects of growing up. Ellen doesn't quite understand why her life force might be so compromised, but she does find power, pride, and a kind of freedom in her silence. Readers familiar with Karl Ove Knausgaard's autobiographical My Struggle series will recognize Linda Boström as its author's ex-wife, adding further intrigue to this quietly bold tale of familial terror and love.""--Annie Bostrom, Booklist ""Knausgård's story of a family in crisis is shocking and imaginative. Everything is written in beautiful and sparse prose which suggests that, after all, from darkness comes light."" --Jury, August Prize ""Knausgård's artistry is masterful."" --Bookslut ""Welcome to America presents itself as an étude in the musical sense of the term: a basic theme that varies to infinity, acquiring with each new variation a new unprecedented facet. A triumph."" --Le Monde ""The incandescent Welcome to America allows one to discover the author's vibrant and powerful universe.""--Lire""Gets you in the gut. A delirious dance."" --L'Alsace Quotidien ""A tender novel about a mute girl: gentle, sensitive, minimal, concise, subtle, and brutal. This is writing as self-defense and liberation."" --Volker Weidermann for Spiegel ""A daring and disturbing novel. One will not soon forget the eleven-year-old narrator and her silence."" --MDR Kultur ""In her slim book, Boström Knausgård conjures a constellation reminiscent of a psychological thriller. Welcome to America is a book that masterfully describes the many nuances of inner darkness."" --Austria Presse Agentur ""A short, very lyrical novel. The scenes succeed in their great universality, closely observed, wisely questioned."" --Brigitte Woman ""Outstanding psychological chamber play. Linda Boström Knausgård has an incredible ability to give voice to the young narrator's haunting thoughts and she does it through such dense prose that is both simple and powerful, both tangible and poetic."" --Politiken ""Boström Knausgård has her own poetic language. The imagery is just as natural and brilliant as it is mad and askew."" --Dagbladet ""A great book! Linda Boström Knausgård certainly does not shy away from the dark and horrible in her family dramas. Her prose is beautiful, clear, and precise. I really love this novel."" --Aftonbladet ""A book cannot, like a person, be accomplished. But Linda Boström Knausgård manages to get very close. She keeps her balance perfectly: she never judges, never justifies. She just narrates, with perfection."" --Sydsvenskan ""Linda Boström Knausgård erases herself from her own writing. What remains is the girl who communicates directly with the reader in a remarkably strong voice, despite her being so quiet.""--Svenska Dagbladet ""Hers is a way of writing that takes risks, without considering the consequences, heading straight for the unknown. Reading her novella is like experiencing a condensed depiction of decay, a decay that also carries a light so strong that it is like standing in the middle of a ray of sunshine."" --Jönköpings-Poste"