"A trim and electrifying novel... Ørstavik's mastery of perspective and clean, crackling sentences prevent sentimentality of sensationalism from trailing this story of a woman and her accidentally untended child. Both of them long for love, but the desire lines of the book are beautifully crooked. Jon wants his mother, and to be let in out of the cold...the cold that seems a character throughout this excellent novel of near misses." (Claire Vaye Watkins, The New York Times Book Review)

"Love is Ørstavik's strongest book." (Karl Ove Knausgaard)

"Prizewinning Norwegian Ørstavik follows the parallel courses of a single mother and her 8-year-old son during a night that moves unrelentingly toward tragedy.... A nightmarish sense of impending doom hangs over these carefully detailed, tightly controlled pages...icy cold to the core." (Kirkus Reviews)

"[A] haunting masterpiece.... The deceptively simple novel is slow-burning, placing each character into situations associated with horror - entering an unfamiliar house, accepting a ride from a stranger - and the result is a magnificent tale." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

Shortlisted for the 2018 National Book Award for Translated Literature, shortlisted for the 2019 PEN America Translation Prize