A Stammered Songbook is more unpredictable and surprising than most books in this genre. Mortier writes with intense engagement about the mother and with great fury about her illness. By sticking so closely to his own experience he makes anger and sorrow at her decline all the more intelligible. And if such a storm rages in the child’s head, what must it be like for the parent? – NRC Handelsblad

Erwin Mortier captures his mother’s dementia in sensitive and elegant prose. The splendid sentences in which he frames her deterioration in fact produce an unexpectedly stark effect. – Trouw

In this painfully beautiful novel it is ultimately love that persists despite everything, the love of a son for his mother. Heartrending. – de Telegraaf