Linn Ullmann's gaze on the power and pain of a teenage girl as remembered and restaged by her adult self is unflinching and startling.--Deborah Levy, author of The Position of Spoons

Linn Ullman's writing, already distinct for its rare moral clarity, attains a new authority in Girl, 1983. It is the authority of focus, of a grip on life that grows more tenacious as its scope determinedly narrows. In the manner of Annie Ernaux, Ullman uses the act of attention as a weapon against indifference. It is as though by reconstructing the disorder of certain realities, she is able to confer sanity on them. Yet there is also a brightness and generosity to her work that seems to turn its themes--the powerlessness of youth and femininity, the intermingling of memory and shame--inside out.--Rachel Cusk, author of Parade

Girl, 1983 unearths one young woman's exhilaration, confusion, and darkness on the cusp of adulthood, drawn inexorably to glamour, only to discover its raw agonies. Linn Ullmann is a master of calm devastation; this is a haunting book.--Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History

This book, about how we meet and understand the powers and the powerful vulnerabilities that form and have formed us, is written with extraordinary courage and a spirit that astounds. It's a work of real strength: poetic, witty, vital, cool and fevered both at once. Girl, 1983 does more than hold the self at all its ages. It pushes the fused power of memoir and story to a new dimension. I think it's a masterpiece.--Ali Smith, author of Gliff

Linn Ullmann's new novel, Girl, 1983, is both beautiful and unsettling. A slow exploration of the narrator's past becomes a quiet and disturbing interrogation of the world's treatment of young women. Here beauty is a dangerous possession, drawing its owner into silence and complicity with those who would harm her. Brava to Ullmann for bravely taking on this dark subject, one which permeates our culture.--Roxanna Robinson, author of Leaving

In precise, lyrical prose, Ullmann creates a captivating portrait of a woman in search of herself, caught in a spiral of fear and loneliness...An engrossing, intimate narrative.-- "Kirkus (starred review)"

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2025-07-22

Length: 272 pages