“Concise, compelling… engaging… Manages to impart a wealth of feeling with a few carefully chosen strokes… Recalls the work of Maggie Nelson, Sheila Heti and Jenny Offill… [Skomsvold’s] style is precise and careful, page after page of well judged, unusual phrases that remain in the mind… Startling phrases abound… The book has a quiet humour… that adds further depth to the insights and observations… Skomsvold writes with empathetic clarity on the sensibility of the artist”
– Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times, Ireland

‘[Written] in a fragmented style reminiscent of Jenny Offill and Rivka Galchen… a raw and sharply observed memoir-of-sorts, taut with nuance and containing a web of interconnected subjects and themes… Contradictions abound—a reflection of reality that rings startlingly true… Skomsvold’s latest work makes for a memorable reading experience. Aided by Martin Aitken’s smooth translation, The Child is an absolute joy—one to be savoured slowly.’
– Rachel Farmer, Lunate, UK

“A bittersweet meditation on motherhood and writing”
Lucy Popescu, The Tablet, UK

“The Child pays close, intelligent attention to motherhood and art. It’s written with memorable precision and love, and I was sorry to finish it”
Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater

“I loved this book, as raw and shimmering as the early nights of motherhood; through its poetic fragments and deep thought the wonder, fear and joy of intimacy shine”
Liz Berry, author of The Republic of Motherhood

“Skomsvold’s fragile, troubled novel about becoming a parent is one of the most extraordinary and at the same time most familiar books on early motherhood I have read … a short and intense novel, sorrowful, raw and powerful”
Weekendavisen, Denmark

“A powerful book on motherhood, anxiety and love … It’s a novel I will read many times”
Information, Denmark

“An unusually impressive novel … simple, but alluringly lyrical prose … The quiet moments that Skomsvold’s narrator recreates are filled with enchantment and unease, as if everyday life is constantly dominated by secrets and danger”
Republik, Germany

“Love came quickly … only writing is unbelievably slow” –  it’s sentences like these, unstilted, wise and still poetic, that make you fall in love with this book. Skomsvold’s tone is contemporary. The main character’s insecurity is the insecurity of our time, where things have become complex.”
Hamburger Abendblatt, Germany

“A slim book that reaches far. An honest novel full of clear images, built up of sensitive prose, a precise look on the self, the world, our time and motherhood. Skomsvold’s prose is light, serious, heartfelt, vulnerable and poetic, and thereby she manages to touch us in the most profound way”
Siegener Zeitung, Germany

“In this intimate novel she shows clearly how motherhood and creativity fuse. A book about creating literature and life”
Annabelle, Germany

“Poetic, sensitive, rich with images … an author tells her newborn daughter about the latter’s birth, about her own life with the father, and about how she risks the very thing that has been the most important thing in her life: writing”
Frizz Magazin

“A very thoughtful, sensitive little book, but beautifully written”
Freies Radio Wiesental, Germany

“The book convinces with its poetry and its form”
Thomas Böhm, Radioeins Literaturagenten, Germany

“A novel which grows stronger by close reading and which will enrich the reader … The text is easy to read, but the prose is carefully sculpted, with metaphors, in a cascade of small, dense images, in moments, at times through wonderfully long, sharp sentences … a sophisticated form and a vivid portrait … a novel with a lot of wisdom”
5/6 stars, VG

“An original portrait of the artist as a mother … it’s all portrayed with subtle humour and unexpected associations … The Child is a novel about love and the will to live with others, and it’s a fresh update of a primordial female motive. Here the child is a force which keeps the artist on track”
NRK Radio

“A wonderful, balanced book about the love between mother and child … She writes beautifully about insufferable physical pain, and grippingly about the relief that only a baby can give”
5/6 stars, Adresseavisen

“If anybody were to write a credible, true-to-experience novel about birth and life with small children, I think few would be better equipped to do so than Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold. With attention to the little details, and a distinctive closeness to her own material, she writes the child into her story.
Vårt Land

“The author writes an infinitely honest letter to her child – with high literay quality and a few ethical challenges … Skomsvold has been productive and innovative both in form and prose. The slightly naively absurd, the anxious and the imaginative has been a recognizable ground note … One thing is certain: Skomsvold transforms her material into good literature … With her usual cracking prose and merciless examination of herself Skomsvold describes the sleepless, anxiety-ridden straying of the brain when motherhood enters the life of a writer”.
Aftenposten

“A literary highpoint in 2018 … Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold is one of the greatest writers of our time, and she is at her most powerful when she writes close to her own life … Good literature makes private experiences universal, and that’s precisely what happens in this novel.”
6/6 stars, Stavanger Aftenblad

“Birth, postnatal period, sleepless nights and tears. Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold adds literary sheen to this experience … the light, playful writing with its precise, inventive images and surprising observations and reflections is in place … Skomsvold can amaze us with her precise, almost brutal existential reflections, like when she writes in this way about pregnancy and birth … This ability to touch our deepest emotions is one of this author’s great gifts … Few can convey vulnerability and fragileness as well as this writer”
Dagsavisen

“Skomsvold’s autobiographical micro-universe with children, partnership and birth mirrors a macro-level of existence, life and death … Skomsvold has rightly been compared to Karl Ove Knausgård, but there is an important difference. While Knausgård’s father gives the My Struggle books their dark energy, the destructive forces in Skomsvold’s life come from within … The Child is as much about tackling life the way it is, full of randomness and difficult to control, and with all the anxiety and unease that anybody can recognize from their own life … Skomsvold is also a very funny writer. Like Dag Solstad, she has the ability to make the oddest moments seem normal, and vice versa”
5/6 stars, Bergens Tidende

“An astonishingly precise novel on having children … She has surprising observations, a subtly black, dry humour and sentences that are so beautiful and subtle that they have to be read several times. Again, Skomsvold succeeds in moving her readers with simple, light prose about the greatest things in life!
6/6, Fædrelandsvennen