Nordic Book Club

The Summer of Ellen by Agnete Friis

Scandinavian literature in translation as part of our Nordic Book Club. Each month we select a novel from some of the best Nordic literary voices. Discussions typically take place the last Tuesday of the month in the Halldór Laxness Library at Scandinavia House and online in our Goodreads group during the last week of the month.

This week we’re reading The Summer of Ellen by Agnete Friis, co-author of the New York Times bestseller The Boy in the Suitcase.

Jacob, a middle-aged architect living Copenhagen, is in the throes of a bitter divorce when he receives an unexpected call from his great-uncle Anton, who is in his nineties and still living with his brother on their rural Jutland farm—a place Jacob hasn’t visited since the summer of 1978. Forty years later, Anton remains haunted by a single question: What happened to Ellen? To find out, Jacob must return to the farm and confront the events that took place that summer, one defined by his teenage obsession with a beautiful young hippie from a local commune.