”It has turned out a good and well-composed novel, thanks to her confidence-inspiring interaction with the sources”
5/6 stars, VG
”It is a novel worth reading, a novel which shocks and which (…) makes an impression”
5/6 stars, Fredrikstad Blad
”It is not just the abuse and suffering which makes this description so powerful, but even more so the contrasts…It is a pitch black hell vision, where hell is inside the characters, tightly, stringently and mercilessly conjured and forced on the reader who is left with the shock and the nausea”
Aftenposten
”A well-written and important book…This is engaging reading, and it is impossible to remain indifferent to the content in Blom’i s novel. Blom’s text is being held in a tight grip the whole way through, and is so stringent and well-composed; the reader is nailed to the story throughout the two hundred pages”
Nordlys
”Novel of the year? Kirsti blom is one of Norway’s most essential authors…Kitten is perhaps the most impressive book she has written. That it hasn’t been picked out by any book clubs is rather incomprehensible. Because this is one of this autumn’s most central publications…The horror comes out in the exposure of how Kitten unintentionally compromises himself. But the pain in the material is almost consequently attached to what isn’t said. Kitten is a novel which quivers with the unsaid. Every page is as good as filled with disturbing abuse. But it is not told of. And it is Kirsti Blom’s achievement that it is still so powerful”
Hamar Arbeiderblad
”She has tremendously good delineations”
5/6 stars, Oppland Arbeiderblad
”The depiction is so vivid; we get the feeling of accompanying Kitten, step by step. We can feel the taste of blood in our mouths and anger towards his women stories – a man in the category oppressors. The author has used a move where she does not let hindsight and the politically correct interfere with the experience and the knowledge and attitudes a young Norwegian man had concerning an unknown continent in the early 1900s. This gives an interesting image of what drove the young men out, and what moulded them out there. Kirsti Blom has contributed a piece of colony history by looking through a young Norwegian’s eyes. We are reminded that we too were in on it”
Bistandsaktuelt
”Kitten appears as a credible image of a chapter in Norwegian history which has been paid little attention to earlier, and it is worth noting how Blom manages to illuminate the complexity of evil…Also the technicalities of storytelling is something Blom handles with elegant subtlety…Moreover, Blom manages to shed light on the cruel face of violence, without gorging on grotesque details…In this context it can be tempting to bring up the fact that Kirsti Blom also is an art photographer, and the descriptions she presents often show a sense for the material which makes Kitten’s travels up the Congo river a perceptible pleasure”
Bøygen
”Kirsti Blom impresses with a pitch black, but very well structured novel about the horribly brutal consolidation of the Belgian King Leopold II’s private colony in Congo, seen through a Norwegian mercenary’s eyes”
Aftenposten
”In the eyes of our time, Kitten is a woman-contempting extortioner, but Kirsti blom manages to depict the young man rather as raped by colonialism…“
Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden
