“An intense portrait of an angry young man from the suburb of Rykkinn … one of [Torgersen’s] best books. The End of Hardcore is less than 200 pages long, but it is a complex, intimate, moving and terrifying portrait of a person must have been completely abandoned in his childhood and youth … The story is of darker kind, written with lots of insight and consideration, nicely balanced against the anger and aggressivity in Einar’s uncompromising voice”
Dagsavisen
“A desperate book on a lost generation … Torgersen’s literary arsenal is like a powder keg. You only need a creative, epic spark to make it all blow up … The book is written in fast-paced, compact, intense prose … It hits you like a blow from the axe Einar usually keeps hidden in the arm of his denim jacket. Straight to your skull”
Dagbladet, 5/6 stars
“The End of Hardcore is to the eighties what Lars Saabye Christensen’s Beatles was to the sixties … Torgersen is a master at describing what can draw a person to violence, riots and destruction, the joy of tearing away everything, so that power faces power … a novel about standing together while everything around you falls apart, about comradeship, drugs and betrayal. It evokes memories of how free we think we are, for a few intense and pretty rough years, before the world relentlessly closes up again”
Klassekampen
“Torgersen does not write comfort literature, he doesn’t idyllize or try to make reality look any better than it is … Torgersen’s prose is beautiful and unpretentious. He is skilled at creating images from an environment few of us – the so-called refined, reading public – probably know very well. The End of Hardcore is a powerful, existential novel about a friendship stronger than anything, about outsiders and love. And it is almost as tender and painful as being brokenhearted from love”
Fri fagbevegelse
“An intense, convincing portrait of a time, a society, a social environment and a childhood … Torgersen portrays frustrated and wounded young people who are unwanted and perhaps unloved, and where no responsible adults or authorities interferes to set boundaries and adjust the direction that their lives are taking. There is little about family or conditions at home here, but the result is anyway catastrophic … This year’s novel finds its natural place in this solid, stylistically confident and exciting writer’s oeuvre.
5/6 stars, Stavanger Aftenblad
“His most accessible novel yet. The reader gets a dose of more or less everything: wisdom, decay, violence, dirt and madness … There is adrenaline in the writing, but also empathy and reflection … At times Torgersen writes dizzyingly well … another impressive little novel by Torgersen. Read it the way you wish. Nothing is carved in stone in Torgersen’s books”
Minerva
