Blue Sunset

At a conference somewhere in Europe, Maja meets the Author. Haunted by a recent tragedy, she leaves with him unexpectedly to his home on the Italian coast, where she wanders into the rhythms of his life, observing the world through the lens of his days. Yet everywhere over their new and tender intimacy hangs the knowledge that soon she will have to return home to Copenhagen, site of her devastating loss. With echoes of Virginia Woolf and Ann Quin, Denise Rose Hansen paints with spare, deft lyricism the complicated landscape of grief and yearning that Maja crosses over on her journey toward something new.

“This slim novel should be read slowly because on every page there is a treasure: a strange thought that strikes like an arrow to the heart of a target, a surprising observation that nevertheless rings perfectly true, a discreet metaphor that seems to have been created for the first time. Hansen is so delicate, so singular, and so precise, that it seems as if she has only ever read the greatest poets.” —Anne Serre

“Blue Sunset streams onto the page in layers or sheets or waves, the emotional weather of the novel meeting the formations of sky, land, and sea. Sublime and inscrutable. In mourning, but alive.” —Amina Cain

“A perfect novel, Blue Sunset is the sweet spot between Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights and Thomas Bernhard, eerie, beautiful, contemplative.” —Camilla Grudova