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Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann, Translated by Caroline Waight

Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann, Translated by Caroline Waight

Literature in Translation Series
Literary Fiction / Medical Thriller
Publication Date: February 22, 2024
242 pages
5.25 x 8 inches
Trade Paperback
ISBN 9781771668675

Trade Paperback
$23.00
(In stock)
Epub
$14.99
(In stock)

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 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 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.

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

“A captivating novel about grief, science, and love. I was hooked from the start.” —Anettes Litteratursalon

“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

Press Coverage

Notable Books Launching in February 2024 —CLMP

“Blue Notes is a gripping read. It’s thoughtful and philosophical … and it hasn’t let go of me very easily since I finished reading it.” —Alison Manley, The Miramichi Reader

“With striking precision, Blue Notes reveals the sinister financial motives that often underpin big pharma. Although straightforward and plot driven, the book considers profound questions about mental illness… In Bomann’s narrative, grief is nebulous.” —Caroline Noël, Literary Review of Canada

Blue Notes asks important questions about how we respond to loss, about what grief means, and about what—or, better yet, who—gets us through it.” —Noah Slaughter, Full Stop

ALU Staff Summer Reads 2024 —All Lit Up

About the Author

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 also the author of two poetry collections and the debut novel, Agatha, which became a word-of-mouth success following publication in Denmark and has now been translated into twenty-three languages.


Caroline Waight is an award-winning literary translator working from Danish, German, and Norwegian. She has translated a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, with recent publications including The Lobster’s Shell by Caroline Albertine Minor (Granta, 2022), Agatha by Anne Cathrine Bomann (Book*hug Press, 2021), Island by Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen (Pushkin Press, 2021) and The Chief Witness by Sayragul Sauytbay and Alexandra Cavelius (Scribe, 2021). 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.