Title:: [[Waist Deep]] Authors:: [[Linea Maja Ernst]] Tags:: #translatedfiction #fiction #danish Read:: [[2025-06-06]] Instagram :: https://www.instagram.com/p/DKmUghXMRTo/ ## Editions - Edition:: [[Jonathan Cape London]], First English Publication 2025 - Original Copyright:: 2024 - Pages:: 212 ## Purchase * Bookshop.org:: ## Annotations This is fantastic. At first, I didn’t think this would be for me. The characters all seemed unlikable— cliched caricatures of Millenials We All Know. But then it dawned on me that what I didn’t like about them were uncomfortable things I recognized about myself, particularly the weight of the masks we wear to play the traditional roles expected of us.  Waist Deep is about coming to terms with this discomfort and learning to find grace in accepting how others choose to respond. It’s about acknowledging what I think we all feel in our bones but sometimes struggle to admit — that ways of being, both in regards to ourselves and our relationships, can be more fluid than we’re conditioned to believe.  It’s funny and sexy, and this may be the best reference to Tove Ditlevsen you’ll ever find: “Her spit-wettened fingertips glide over her clit, but she can’t let go, can’t shake the feeling of failure, of being in the middle of a failed, autoerotic version of Tove Ditlevsen’s poem, ‘The Eternal Three.’”  (We’ll find out who reads the full review with this quote, smh).  Finally, I enjoyed how Ernst’s prose (translated by Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg) is full of chained clauses that create a rhythm to the writing that makes you want to read it out loud. There are places where the narrative perspective builds and builds, and then shifts seamlessly like a song.