Being translated into English by Sherilyn Hellberg

A group of friends in their early thirties gather at a lake house. It’s midsummer and the week before a wedding. Two of the friends are getting married. The group prepares —loafing, bickering, flirting, posing, sunbathing, stirring up old feelings. Sylvia has always had a crush on Esben, the groom. She’s in a comfortable, stable relationship with her girlfriend, Charlie, but can’t quite settle. Quince finally feels at home in his body and is ready to rave, but there are children with bedtime routines and Gry has brought along her boyfriend Adam who’s a poster child for heterosexuality. Karen is excited to get married, but even more excited to get back to work. And while sparks fly around the dinner table, Gry is feeling banal among her colorful, eccentric friends.

Linea Maja Ernst’s debut novel, Waist Deep is a modern midsummer night’s dream about friends, lovers and friends’ lovers; about sex, hope and love; and about dreaming that everything could be different.

“Waist Deep might be this literary year’s first full fledged miracle”

- Berlingske

“Shamelessly entertaining”

- Kristeligt Dagblad

“Linea Maja Ernst writes about sexual desire so well that it turns her readers on” / “At once silly and fragile, flirtatious and sensitive”

- Weekendavisen

“An intense, confrontational and in every sense interesting novel about the fragility and (for some) fluidity of identity”

- Information

“A completely superb and playful contemporary novel … Its pages ooze life lived, the gallery of characters is razor-sharp, the dialogue is flawless and the spry cultural references tie it all neatly together into a drama worthy of Virginia Woolf.”

- Euroman

“A perfume dream of a debut about the wild force of friendship”

- Politiken

“Linea Maja Ernst writing about opulent dinner parties and the heady magnetism of midsummer forests is sensory and atmospheric”

- Soundvenue