“A both rough and gripping story about how suppressed events in childhood return, when the main character accidentally meets an old acquaintance from school … The author portrays events in the main character’s life in a way that makes the reader shiver and at times forces her to put the book down”
Litteratursiden.dk, Denmark
“An unusually powerful portrait of a childhood forms the core of Bjørn Esben Almaas’ latest novel … the portrait of the boy [is] powerful, brutal and heartbreaking. We see how he struggles to outmanoeuvre those who wants to attack and those who wants to understand”
NRK P2
“The best and most heartfelt, painful novel I have read in a long time. It’s also the only novel I’ve read twice in two weeks. This is excellent literature»
Rune Christiansen, author of Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest
“There’s a lot of uneasiness in the book, an uneasiness that grabs the reader and refuses to let go. My reaction is physical, it feels like a claw in the stomach, in the same way as when I read horror or dystopias with a lot of external terror. But here it’s mostly what goes on inside the head of the main character that creates distress … Almaas is simply so good at seeing the world from the angle of a child … a novel that is both sensitive and intense. The prose contributes to the sharp contrasts of the atmosphere”
Dag og Tid
“A sensitive and insightful portrait of a child … Almaas draws a heartbreaking picture of the brutality and viciousness of both children and adults, and of how the boy balances between those who want to help him and those who torment him … The Good Friend is an insightful story about a boy’s despair and a sad testimony to the fundamental loneliness that probably can be found in all of us, if we only dare to look”
5/6 stars, Stavanger Aftenblad
“The prose is precise and sober. The quiet way in which the drama is narrated, the story which is uncovered in flashes, without the reader quite knowing where we are going, creates an uneasiness that makes the text quiver. The linguistic survival mechanisms take us straight into the head of the child … Almaas confirms that he is a talent with insight into the human mind. Such a comprehensive portrait of the nature and consequences of bullying is unusual in contemporary Norwegian literature”
Klassekampen
“A well-written novel about bullying … In combination with a quiet prose, which in a beautiful way exposes the underlying pain that gradually colours the main character’s experience of life, and, as stated above, an unsually keen eye for details, The Good Friend becomes a novel that shows how childhood trauma is not something that you grow out of. On the contrary, it may grow and take over your life”
Adresseavisen
