“To be enjoyed slowly. Lars Amund Vaage draws inspiration from his own family’s past, and tells the story in a both heartfelt and precise way … a language that radiates with poetry and gorgeous images … Vaage describes his agony with great credibility and poetic power”
Dagbladet

“Several passages are unique, unmissable… The discussions of the relationship between language, home and identity come across as the best parts of this novel, next to its brutally beautiful descriptions of landscape”
Klassekampen

“Reading Lars Amund Vaage’s new novel is pure bliss. The prose of The Unfinished House is art of high order … The Unfinished House can be characterized as both an artist’s novel and a historical novel. But above all this is writing that slips under the reader’s skin … Vaage has embedded an entire poetics in this novel. He writes beautifully and with great insight about writing, and about how words and sentences arise”
Dagsavisen

“A finely crafted portrait of a burgeoning poet who is torn between duty and poetry, tradition and modernity … a well-composed, well-written coming-of-age story about longing and sacrifice”
Stavanger Aftenblad

“A historical, topical and gripping novel … Even though we get close to the artist, who is pulled in many different directions, I was surprised by the ending. It is dramatic in the soft-spoken way that this author approaches the drama of life, without big gesture, but always with an uneasiness or nerve below the surface. The novel moves forward, but the text runs in loops, frequently returning to the different questions it addresses. The rhythm here is carefully composed, without appearing contrived. The prose is wise and beautiful, made for slow reading”
NRK

“A beautiful book about quiet people, landscapes and longing. Lars Amund Vaage writes with his own inimitable rhythm and pulse … a quite extraordinary read … The novel finds the fine balance between mirroring the times and portraying a poet who gradually struggles with making his poems ‘sing’”
Bergens Tidende

“An object of value only becomes a treasure for the one who doesn’t take it for granted, and that might be part of Lars Amund Vaage’s secret. He is curious about language and what it can do … Some passages are gorgeous”
Morgenbladet

“What makes a house a home, what creates bonds between people, and what did the folk high schools do with gifted young people from the countryside in the early 1900s? … [a] story of big dreams, unfinished houses and a sense of duty one can’t get rid of. Painful and beautiful. No, beautiful and painful”
NRK, Books of the year, 2020

“Some fictional characters are so vivid that they follow me into my own life, like a new friend. Gabriel Hallvardsson Hauge is such a character, and even though the story takes place at the beginning of the last century, the main character’s longing and agony feel burn strongly through Vaage’s quivering prose”
Siri Odfjell Risdal, Kapittel Festival, Books of the Year, 2020