Blue Notes

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By (author): Anne Cathrine Bomann

Translated by: Caroline Waight

How much grief is too much? How far should we go to avoid pain? From the author of the international bestselling novel Agatha comes a literary medical thriller about loss, empathy, science, Big Pharma, and societal norms.

A Danish university research group is finishing its study of a new medicine, Callocain: the world’s first pill for grief. But psychology professor Thorsten Gjeldsted suspects that someone has manipulated the test results to hide a disturbing side effect. When no one believes him, he teams up with two students to investigate: Anna, who has recently experienced traumatic grief herself, and Shadi, whose statistical skills might prevent her from living a quiet life in the shadows. Together, these sleuthing academics try to discover what’s really happening before the drug becomes widely available.

Blue Notes is brimming with ethical and existential ideas about the search for identity and one’s place in the world, while offering a highly original literary adventure that ultimately underscores the healing power of love.

AUTHOR

Anne Cathrine Bomann

ANNE CATHRINE BOMANN lives in Copenhagen dividing her time between writing and working as a psychologist. She also played table tennis for Denmark and won the national championship twelve times. She is the author of two novels, Blue Notes and Agatha, which became a word-of-mouth success following publication in Denmark and has been translated into twenty-three languages.

AUTHOR

Caroline Waight

CAROLINE WAIGHT is an award-winning literary translator working from Danish, German, and Norwegian. She has translated a wide range of books, including The Lobster’s Shell by Caroline Albertine Minor (Granta), Agatha and Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann (Book*hug Press), Island by Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen (Pushkin Press) and The Chief Witness by Sayragul Sauytbay and Alexandra Cavelius (Scribe). She grew up travelling around the world, living in eight different countries. Having first studied music at Cambridge, Oxford, and Cornell, she worked in publishing before transitioning into full-time literary translation. She now lives and works near London.

Reviews

“Blue Notes strength lies in the author’s ability to portray the different ways grief can manifest: Bomann uses the individual characters and their lives to open up a discussion about whether grief is really a disease or ‘merely’ an inevitable reaction to loss.” —Jyllands-Posten

“Bomann writes about grief in the most beautiful way. The novel’s greatest asset is its strong characters, as well as the genuinely moving descriptions of how it feels to be mired in profound grief. It is a fascinating, well-written, and thought-provoking book.” —Hverdagsbog