”A power dose of literature of the kind that delights anybody with a weakness for novels … one of her best novels. It bears all its author’s trademark qualities: The clear translucent writing … the innuendos, the dreamy sequences, the flashbacks … the sharpness, the dangerous edges, the surprising, odd, sometimes humorous images.”
(Dagsavisen)
“Her stories have little plot or outer action. Despite that there is an enormous tension in them. Ørstavik writes a kind of “psychological thrillers” that … touches on the shapeless and deeply human. When I read, it feels as if she is trying to open up something that has been sealed off, as if she is forcing me into something very difficult that I don’t want to apply to me, but which does anyway … Ørstavik’s tenth novel, Hyenas, is now out in Norway, at the same time as her 48 rue Defacqz has become available in Swedish … I have read both, one right after the other, and I still have cramps in my stomach. These are Ørstavik best and most perfect novels so far”
(Aftonbladet, Sweden)
“Hanne Ørstavik is a much loved Norwegian writer who has been showered with literary awards. For a long time I had problems with her books because of the women in them … I was troubled by them, wanted to shake them, force them. DO something! Until I recognized how similar they were to myself … There is an unbearable place here, and I haven’t seen it as brutally described as in Ørstavik’s book … Entering 48 rue Defacqz is entering a state of repetition, of variations that leave deep wheel tracks in the body/heart”
(Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden)
“I appreciate the consistency in Ørstavik’s works: The exploration of desire for truth and the struggle to express it, the search for meaning in a world that is ugly whether there are mountains or streets in the background. But most of all maybe that which originally was difficult to grasp in this novel: the conflict between man and society, how the borders between speech and silence are created”
(Dagens Nyheter, Sweden)
