Reviews

The talent of Morten Brask est indéniable.

This book goes right to the heart with great emotional force. This young wonderkid was unknown … until the arrival of this book by Morten Brask, who writes with sharp intelligence and a terribly effective pen. A must read. Brask is a great storyteller. The language is fluent and fascinating and creates a mosaic of contrasts with a plot where past and present are interchanging in a constant exitement.

Morten Brask not only achieves the goals he has set for himself as a writer, he also manages to keep the reader entrigued […] As for the modeling of the characters, it is expertly done: the characters are not described, but the reader gets to feel like them and experience what they experience.

His first novel is a fine work of art about a dark period in Time. Everything is said without retinence, but with huge finesse. Almost a poetic work about the terror of the camps (…) A very beautiful novel. A girl and a boy” is a tragic and heartbreaking story, depicted with a sort of clinical sobriety and factual observation (…) The Danish and well established author Morten Brask (…) manages to turn grief and pain into something unsentimental and comprehensible.

It is so amazing that a person who has not been a prisoner  in the concentration camp Theresienstadt has this emphathy. This is exactly how it was … The Sea in Theresienstadt surprises by its pristine freshness of perception, its tenderness of tone and its impressive wholeness.  A story of love in the midst of the Nazi hell. The book is a great piece of art. I devoured the book in one long puff, cried and smiled – the fragility, sensitivity, the pure language and the ability to accurately balance on the right side of sentimentality makes it a little gem. Morten Brask takes his reader into the pain and sorrow (…) The book describes beautifully and elegantly the fear of losing everything as a kind of tranquility where you prepare yourself for the inevitable. (…) It is beautiful, difficult and very worth  reading. Excellent novel that tells a grim and haunting story in a sober, yet beautiful and sensual language. (…) With ‘A girl and a boy’ Brask gets his roaring breakthrough as a great and talented writer who in a rarely seen fashion combines a haunting story with beautiful and sensual language. If one is not affected deeply by this novel, one must have a heart of stone.

Morten Brask has written such diverse and internationally renowned stories as the war romance “The Sea in Theresienstadt” and the story of the unhappy child prodigy “The perfect Life of William Sidis“ and now a contemporary story of ‘the worst that can happen’. (…) So we basically have to do with a writer who seeks out and examines the big emotions’ pompous comings and goings.

Morten Brask shows with a language stripped of all unnecessary decoration and at the same time contains so incredibly much, how two people meet and part. It is a novel that virtually feels as a physically pain in your own body. (…) “A girl and a boy” is not only a big but also an understated reading experience. I wept as I read. Morten Brask does not spare the reader anything. His dialogues are short and precise, but his descriptions are thorough. (…) “A girl and a boy” balances fascinatingly between the detailed and the preciseness of a needle.

With works as ‘The Sea in ​​Theresienstadt” and  “The perfect Life of William Sidis” he has proven himself as an author of stylish and psychological intimate prose. And now again. “A girl and a boy” is a touching read. (…) It is a great achievement.