“wonderfully creepy … written by someone with real literary and psychological intelligence … the author knows what she’s doing. Certain novels are themselves like locked rooms, and exploit that claustrophobia to maximum advantage; this is one of them … The temptation here, I’d imagine, would be to lay things on a bit thick: the mother would be more deranged and vengeful, the daughter more damaged. But Ørstavik is cannier than that”
The Guardian

“Establishing a new parent-child dynamic is vital; and Norwegian writer Hanne Ørstavik’s haunting novel will act as a warning to everyone not to regress into old, interdependent ways … Johanne wakes to find that her bedroom door has been locked. Will she find a way out – or, indeed, choose not to? The intense and challenging denouement will ensure you finish the novel in one sitting”
The Independent

“The Blue Room is a highly unusual, coolly daring psychological thriller that explores emotional pain and indifference with an unsettling detachment … Ørstavik boldly ventures inside an ordinary psyche. The result is unnerving”
The Irish Times

“This is the first of the Norwegian novelist Hanne Ørstavik’s works to appear in English – a long overdue recognition, given the lithe psychological intellect here on display … Ørstavik’s descriptions of Johanne’s despair at her own physical reality are brilliantly tender … The Blue Room is also an impressive feat of selective narration … This is a work of chilling, masterly control”
Times Literary Supplement