It is painful, but also rewarding to read, primarily because Sæterbakken writes enormously well. The language never becomes a shield or filter, quite the opposite, it drills into the darkness, with a precision and ingenuity in the use of images that paradoxically feels liberating() ... None of the simple constituents is particularly original, it is rather about playing with familiar motifs, but Sæterbakken shows that he masters classic, fear-inducing storytelling.

Saeterbakken's confident articulation of the myriad emotions and symptoms that make up Meyer's grief is a grand example of drawing universality from extreme specificity; the prose is evocative in a way that forces the reader to feel deeply the entire gamut of his particular sorrow and guilt while also being an observer of his wife divergent experience. ... Readers may lose the plot's thread in a surreal sequence towards the end, but it is not wholly disorienting. Though hardly uplifting, Saeterbakken last is notable for the beauty and heartbreak of its narration.