How much grief is too much? How far should we go to avoid pain? Blue Notes, a literary medical thriller about loss, empathy, science, Big Pharma, and societal norms.
In This Spotlight On Blue Notes
About Blue Notes
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 young 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 a medical thriller 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.
An intriguing exploration of grief, Blue Notes not only provides an adrenaline rush, it delves deep into the complex emotions surrounding grief and offers a profound perspective on loss, making it a thought-provoking read for those seeking depth and meaning in the novels they read.
ISBN 9781771668675
Publication Date: February 22, 2024
Publisher: Book*hug Press
Literature in Translation Series
Source: Publisher.
Praise for Blue Notes
“Part suspense novel, part character study, Blue Notes takes us into the world of Big Pharma, greed, and the pathologization of emotion. But at its heart, it is a touching meditation on love and loss and what it means to be truly human.”—Elyse Friedman, author of The Opportunist
“Like watching a beautiful wound heal over, Blue Notes embraces the necessary scars that hold us together.”—Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold
“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
Blue Notes is “A captivating novel about grief, science, and love. I was hooked from the start.”—Anettes Litteratursalon
In Blue Notes, “Anne Cathrine 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
About Anne Cathrine Bomann, Author of Blue Notes
Anne Cathrine Bomann, author of Blue Notes, lives in Copenhagen and works part time as a writer and part time as a psychologist. She is the author of two poetry collections. Her debut novel Agathe has been translated into twenty-three languages. She is also the author of the YA-novel What No One Knows. She also played table tennis for Denmark and won the national championship twelve times.
You can find and follow Bomann on her website, and on Instagram, and Facebook.
Titles by Anne Cathrine Bomann
About The Translator, Caroline Waight
Caroline Waight is an award-winning literary translator working from Danish, German and Norwegian. She translates both fiction and non-fiction, and most recently was a finalist for the 2023 PEN Translation Prize and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
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