“Fjæren’s unembellished fatalism is a bracing antidote to the baggy didacticism that characterizes many contemporary novels about relationship dynamics”
Houman Barekat, Times Literary Supplement, UK

“A quiet force of a novel, Fixed Ideas picks apart the trappings of individualism and the selfish side of love. It’s unflinching in its analysis of modern dating, holding up a mirror to the independence of youth … Fixed Ideas is accurate and exquisite. The sparse language creates an intense bubbling of feelings that is hard to ignore. It’s a delicate and effortless portrayal of intimacy, with characters that pierce the skin.
Mariah Feria, In Under 300, UK

“A dense, elegant study of longing for love in the age of individualism … The tension and vitality is on the characters’ level of reflection, in their expectations towards the other and their critical self-examination … Fjæren portays the challenges of intimacy effortlessly and with precision”
Dagsavisen

“The sentences wind their way elegantly in a minimalistic style, nothing seems superfluous here.”
Bergens Tidende

“A powerful novel about wounds of the soul and the desperate attempts to heal them … [Fjæren] displays an excellent sense of topical subjects … She writes so effortlessly and lightly about taboos and embarrassing moments that you almost forget that that’s what they are. Women in Emilie’s situation will find a friend in this book, but it cannot be reduced to a book for a specific target audience. The reader has to dive down to a dark place, but Fjæren lets in a stream of light, and thereby also shows a way out”
5/6 stars, Dagbladet

“Brilliant prose and great psychological insight into how difficult it is to look to the bottom of somebody else … In an unusually elegant way, Eline Lund Fjæren’s third novel shows us the titillating, but dangerous relationship between who we are and who we pretend to be … In great detail Fjæren examines sexual and verbal relationships, expectations people have and expectations they think other people have, and the ability to define oneself in a way that makes us meet another person”
Dag og Tid

“Self-consciousness is the main driver of the game in Eline Lund Fjæren’s stylish novel of relationships … If it doesn’t become obvious to the reader of Eline Lund Fjæren’s third novel that it’s a contemporary horror novel she is reading, the horror is underlined with full force in the very last sentence of the novel: “I smiled to him and wondered how I looked”.
Morgenbladet

“A well-written, well-thought novel which manages to portray the dynamics between people in a way that I think many people can relate to. Fjæren’s confident, brief style matches the brevity of the relationship she depicts between the two”
Vårt Land