The Endless Summer

Madame Nielsen, one of Denmark’s most daring artists, joins Scott Esposito to discuss The Endless Summer, translated by Gaye Kynoch and published by Open Letter Books.

A passionate love story about a Danish woman and a much younger Portuguese artist, The Endless Summer confronts ideas of time, sexuality, and tragedy in a style reminiscent of both Proust and Lars Von Trier.

Emotional and visceral, the novel drifts through time and space, relating the lives, loves, and dissolutions of everyone who surrounds this unexpected couple, including the woman’s ex-husband who holds the family at gunpoint, her daughter, and her lovers, who include a boy who finds himself and his true sexual identity in America. There is also the young boy who “is perhaps a girl, but does not yet know it,” who narrates it all.

Propelled by a captivating story, the real charm of the novel is its impeccable style and atmosphere, which is imbued with longing, a nostalgia for times that thrum with possibility, even if the endless summer may not last forever.