The Summer of Ellen

March 25, 2019
One evening in Copenhagen, architect Jacob Nielson, the embittered, alcohol-fueled, middle-aged narrator of this bleak standalone from bestseller Friis (the Nina Borg series with Lena Kaaberbøl), shows up at the building where his ex-wife, Kirsten, lives and buzzes her apartment. Not surprisingly, Kirsten doesn’t let him in. Soon afterward, Jacob receives a phone call from his great-uncle Anton Svenningsen, who lives on a farm in Djursland and with whom he’s been out of touch for years. Anton wants his help finding a missing woman named Ellen, and Jacob agrees to return to the farm. Jacob hasn’t spent time in that part of Denmark since the summer of 1978, when he was an excessively autoerotic
15-year-old obsessed with Ellen, a member of a hippie commune, and with the unsolved disappearance of a friend’s sister. Friis alternates between that summer and Jacob’s present-day search for Ellen, with the emphasis on the dual story of Jacob’s coming-of-age and his midlife crisis. Mainstream readers who can relate to the self-pitying Jacob will be most rewarded.

Unless you're a Danish speaker, you will appreciate this powerful novel more if you listen to the audiobook. Narrator Victor Bevine offers an atmospheric mystery while displaying an impressive facility with Danish place and character names. Jacob, wallowing in self-pity and alcohol after his divorce, is called by his 90-year-old great-uncles to come to their rural farm. When he returns after many years away, Jacob's memories evoke a time when he was a 15-year-old passionately, erotically obsessed with Ellen. After seeing something intolerable at the uncles' farm, Ellen disappeared. Bevine offers clear transitions from the present day to memory, making Jacob's coming-of-age and midlife crisis credible. Elegant writing combined with a strong narration makes this classic whodunit an audiobook to savor. S.J.H. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine