Book Review

By Derryll White

Friis, Agnete (2015). The Summer of Ellen.

Agnete Friis is known for the Nina Borg mystery series that she collaborated on with Lene Kaaberbøl. This is, for this Danish author, her second solo novel, focussed on love and violence in families.

Friis pulls the reader in quickly with her detailed descriptions, obscure objects finely exposed, and her cheeky humour. She has the essence of men down frightfully well for a woman so young. Even the jargon translates into echoing, knowable English. “I’ve heard you can go blind.”

There are many insights, artfully stated. Agnete Friis is an accomplished writer. Having said that, this novel does not end nearly as strongly as it started.

Ellen fades away and Jacob gains little from his quest other than reliving past memories, while his wife Kristin remains the unsolved enigma. The author’s language is exciting enough that I will look for one of the Nina Borg mysteries and see how well she does in collaboration. Her noir moments here are very dark, synonymous with a lot of Scandinavian fiction, and her delight with life is readily communicated. It is the structure of the story that pulled me down in the end.

****

Excerpts from the novel:

SYNCHRONICITY – There were drowning refugees on the front page, a little girl floating in an azure sea. A butterfly had beaten its wings somewhere in the Amazon and released chaos into the universe.

ART – “You’re wrong, Utzon,” she said. “That tree has been moving for almost a thousand years, only in slow motion. Very, very slow.”

She stuck both of her forearms into the air and rotated them slightly.

“Even stones are in motion before petrifying. You can tell from their lines and colors that they’ve been twisted, and pressed and turned, and have been softened and plied in the red-hot hands of a great god. That’s what you have to draw – the movement. Always look for the movement.”

WOMEN – “Do you know why women hate us, Jacob?”

I shook my head.

“Women hate men because we only want to screw them for 20 years of their lives. They know it and we know it. And they get revenge while they can, by any means they can.”

MEN – “Because what happened to Lise stinks of men. Men kill, not women. Take it from someone who’s done a good bit of fieldwork out there in reality. Men can get so completely insane because we have a hole they want to stick their cock in. And, if they’re not allowed.”

TIME – I sat in the kitchen for a while with the pictures scattered in front of me. Thought about Ellen. You look differently at old pictures than you do new ones. So much can happen to a smile and eyes in nearly 40 years. Life has a way of wearing away all the shine. Ekbäck

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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