A spellbinding, darkly poetic literary novel that plunges us into the inner life of America’s first female serial killer
‘This fascinating, off-kilter novel about a female serial killer is an unexpectedly thrilling read’ Karl Ove Knausgaard
Seventeen-year-old Brynhild is in a fever – she can’t quiet the screaming world inside her. When an intense affair ends brutally, she flees Norway for America at the end of the nineteenth century in search of a new life. Changing her name first to Bella, later to Belle, she is driven from any potential refuge by an unbearable tension that won’t let her keep still. As Belle seeks release in a series of men, her yearning for an all-consuming love erupts into violence.
In this breathtaking novel, Victoria Kielland imagines her way into the tumultuous inner life of the Norwegian woman who became Belle Gunness – America’s first known female serial killer. Written in prose of wild, visceral beauty, My Men is a radically empathetic and disquieting portrait of a woman capable of ecstatic love and gruesome cruelty.
Reviews
The intense, progressively feverish quality of the novel is far closer to the visceral interiority of Clarice Lispector or Jean Rhys than anything by Jo Nesbø or Stieg Larsson… A singular novel of unusual power from a fearless and remarkable writer
Guardian
This fascinating, off-kilter novel about a female serial killer is an unexpectedly thrilling read
A memorably unsettling study in literary interiority… The grisly subject matter is paired with intensely expressionist prose
Observer
An extraordinary, visceral fictionalisation of Belle’s life… Belle’s story is not one of a police procedural or thriller… The prose flies and flays, is porous and illuminating
Irish Times
An extraordinary portrait of the inner turmoil and ecstasy of the woman widely regarded to be America’s first female serial killer
Marie Claire
My Men, superbly translated by Damion Searls, is a portrait of a woman trying, and failing, to escape her punishing trajectory. Bit by bit, day by day, we see, and come to understand, what has made Belle Gunness a killer
New York Times
An eerily lyrical tour de force… The author affords her a rich and terrifying inner life in this horrific, sustained portrait of a traumatized human soul
Wall Street Journal
Kielland plumbs Belle’s inner life in jaggedly rhythmic prose, where what should be obvious is sometimes opaque and what’s often shrouded – female rage – takes centre stage
New York Times, Best Crime Books of the Year
A stylistic tour de force, a third-person account of Belle Gunness’s grotesque odyssey as perceived through her own sensorium… A gifted writer
Wall Street Journal
Her spiritual yearning and profane desires are captured in dynamic and subversive prose as Kielland explores how Belle’s homicidal tendencies derive from a perverted sense of love. It’s an impressive feat of historical imagination
Publishers Weekly
Lyrical… Despite the subject matter, this novel is not your typical thriller. The language, in Searls’ translation, is dense, poetic, and deeply figurative
Kirkus Reviews
One of the best young authors we have… Kielland makes Brynhild tragic rather than cold-blooded
Morgenbladet
Gripping, unique, and amazingly well-written
Vårt Land
Unusual and extraordinary
Klassekampen
What this rich and poignant novel does is try to get as deep as possible to the core of a person who struggles with what she is doing to the world and to herself. My Men is a literary achievement of the highest order
De Standaard, 5 stars
