“How can realistic everyday stories that only want to dig around in petty, ugly feelings be such a beautiful, light read? I kept sneaking away to read a little bit more about the ambivalently childless, jealous, unfaithful, abandoned, fickle characters of the Norwegian author Marie Aubert’s two works … This is prose that makes you hurt inside, but beautifully and subtly written … There is a nice calm, a steadiness, in Aubert’s patient but not mild focus on big emotions.”
Weekendavisen, Denmark [double review of Grown-ups and Can I Come Home with You]

“These are gripping, gripping stories that show how complicated very basic feelings can end up becoming … The stories are short with precise incisions right down to the place it hurts, where small feelings become big, or the big ones disappear. It’s shockingly sharp and well written”
Femina, Denmark

“Aubert sees right through her characters, to the point where you’re almost embarrassed on their behalf. With simple means she shows us their pride, their jealousy or their schadenfreude… What makes Aubert’s stories about couples, dating or involuntary childlessness so good, is that she creates characters that feel believable and real in all their imperfection. It’s not the characters’ irrational actions, but it’s the way they rationalize and justify them afterwards, that is so shocking. It’s not the lies in themselves, but the fact that these conceited women themselves believing them, that is absurd. Herein lies also Aubert’s devilish, entertaining humour, which is all the more comic in contrast with the fundamental melancholy of these works.”
Information, Denmark [double review of Grown-ups and Can I Come Home with You]

“If you’re only going to read one short story collection in 2020, then let it be this collection of simple, incisive stories … [Aubert] shows a talent for diving down to the essential so that all superfluous talk is cut away, without making the story too simple or insignificant. As a reader you might feel that it’s you who are being put on the line, when the human mind is pierced with such precision that you are left feeling exposed and slightly guilty. Aubert presents her reader with an explosion of emotions with a single sentence. It’s at the same time beautiful and cringe-inducing”
Litteratursiden.dk, Denmark

“A beautiful little collection of short stories … next time you want to see another episode of a Netflix series, pick up this book instead. When you get going, you’ll surely be so absorbed that you’ll want to binge read all nine stories here”
Litteraturhjørnet.dk, Denmark

“Marie Aubert writes about how we really are. What’s really on our minds when we speak our minds … She does so with an ease that makes you think of the old greats of the short story … What all of them have in common is that there is something at stake. Something the reader can identify with … A sharp psychological eye, a sensitivity to the tension between people, distances that are never crossed, attraction that never becomes strong enough. The prose is simple, so simple that it must have cost infinite hours of rewriting and deletions”
Aftenposten

“The stutter and fragility of everyday speech is lent a literary dignity by debut writer Marie Aubert’s confident writing … The stories are beautifully composed, and gives an impression of being written with great care for the characters portrayed”
Vårt Land

“Aubert’s stories are bursting with literary talent and human insight … The high quality of Aubert’s short stories are not least a consequence of the author’s confident understanding of the literary opportunities that arise from the story’s beginning. She is practically never distracted by fruitless whims … a writer with a confident eye for the elementary contradictions of life. In a literary landscape where more and more writers are tempted to write directly about their own lives, it’s liberating to read a debut by a writer who has such a strong ability to empathise with the fates of other people”
Morgenbladet

“Marie Aubert is equipped with a sharp psychological eye for social situations … Marie Aubert presents these difficult, complicated problems and feelings in surprising, accurate situations. Her prose is precise and light, with wonderful, revealing dialogues. Often with astonishing turns that open the story towards new insights … a short story collection with a long aftertaste”
Dagsavisen

”Aubert has written a handsome, energetic short story collection about human relations filled with longing, desire and shame”
Hamar Arbeiderblad

“A well-written short story collection full of charm and tristesse … The dialogues flow easily, the characters feel real and the stories move the reader”
5/6, VG

“With sharp psychological sense, the author portrays numerous fates, and I am carried away, I get curious about the next one”
5/6, Fædrelandsvennen

“Nine piquant, erotic, tragic, entertaining debut stories with a feeling of shame at their core … Aubert is good at transitions, from the same woman who was just looking for some undemanding lover, time flows effortlessly into pushing a pram around, longing for what once was … There are several ways to interpret the disturbing moods, which are thoroughly everyday. Each story is around 10 pages with good literary quality, nice transitions, surprising twists and precise prose … A debut of note”
5/6, Adresseavisen

“[The stories are lifted] by the way the stories consistently revolve around the dark fields of the main character’s inner lives, without offering any banal psychological explanations for their motives … You sense that the freedom revolution here eats its own children, but we are still spared any reactionary suggestions to how this can be avoided: The confusion is treated with seriousness, and thereby contributes to a credible document of a generation”
Klassekampen

“Aubert has written real short stories, not novel fragments or expanded poems, but texts that have found their ultimate form and length … This is a fine literary debut by an author with great understanding of people, smooth prose and a good dramaturgical skills”
Dag og Tid

“Nine well-composed stories about longing and desperation, transgressions and break-ups … In quiet, precise prose Aubert captures the shades of grey of everyday life, and the nagging hopelessness and quiet desperation that characterize these characters’s lives”
Stavanger Aftenblad

“A debut it’s difficult not to be moved by … In each of the nine stories, the author manages to pull you straight into the story … Her excellent prose makes each sentence of the book a joy to read. An even greater joy can be found in reading what isn’t written. What is between the lines. There she is very skilled.”
5/6, Romerikes blad

“A well-written short story collection full of charm and tristesse. Accurate comedy with audacious, lustful women in the main roles”
VG, Books of the Year 2016

“Sweet, thought-provoking stories from everyday life. Through empathetic and at times raw portraits, we learn more about life”
Dagbladet, Books of the Year 2016

“The best debut writer this years has written a collection of nine stories about shame and break-ups and communicational difficulties, about people fumbling after each other, trying to meet each other in a real way. It might not provide for joyful reading, but sarcasm and a certain amount of  black humour at the bottom saves these stories from exaggerated sadness”
Dagsavisen, Books of the Year 2016

“Newcomer of the year Marie Aubert has written an exciting short story collection which contains a lot. Here are nine different stories that show glimpses of different fates: A woman who leaves her husband but perhaps regrets it, a man who doesn’t want to adopt a child after all. People standing at a crossroad, in quite everyday situations that probably are so familiar that it will be painful to many readers”
Stavanger Aftenblad, Books of the Year 2016