After the Death of Ellen Keldberg

by Eddie Thomas Petersen, Toby Bainton (Translator)

The Danish seaside town of Skagen is an artists' paradise in summer, but only the locals live there in winter. Two visitors come to Skagen from Copenhagen on a snowy night after the death of the elderly artist Ellen Keldberg . She was found frozen on a street bench, and now lies laid out on her bed, waiting for a post-mortem. Her student nephew Mikkel comes to Skagen because he has to organise her funeral, yet he can barely remember Aunt Ellen and knows nothing about her life. Anne Sofie comes to exhibit her photographs, and single-mindedly pursue her ruthless quest. She will allow no-one to hide, or obscure the truth about Ellen. Before Anne Sofie has finished, there will be blood in the snow, and she will have photographed death. This unputdownable novel by the Danish writer Eddie Thomas Petersen is as relentless as Anne Sofie's smile, as unstoppable as her search for answers. It's a family saga, a murder mystery, and a portrait of Skagen in the dark and in the snow, full of alliances and old secrets. Toby Bainton's translation does full justice to the calmness of the narration, a thriller without gore, but utterly gripping. Discover Ellen Keldberg's story as Mikkel blunders through Skagen in winter, following the elusive Anne Sofie.

85 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 3, 2018

Reviews

[Ken Fredette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who thought that who-done-it could be so entertaining and surprising at the same time. Ellen Keldberg died as a drug addict frozen to death on a park bench outside one of her haunts as a drunk. One of her distant relations, Mikkel, was sent by his mom and dad to finalize her burial in a small seaside town in Denmark while they were traveling in Mexico. We have all the makings of a good story when one week later two small boys find a body of a naked man on the beach, Zeppo Popović is a master chief and goes down to check this out. This is the end of the story.

Mikkel takes the train and meets Anne Sofie as she is made the scape goat of a woman who's lost her ticket and has to leave the train at the next stop. He see's her the day after they are at the village and have become sort of friends. It get complicated and he goes to the undertaker and gets the cheapest casket because aunt Ellen is being cremated and gets the feeling that the undertaker is high and leaves very quickly. He then goes to the pastor and gets the date set up for the funeral and then leaves this to her.

With this set up he gets involved with Anne Sofie but not in the way he would like. Their relationship is based on her getting in to see his deceased aunt because she would like to take pictures of her. She makes a switch with him of their keys and goes back to take her pictures. What she has already found out is that she adopted and Ellen was her mother. She take pictures of Ellen and Anne Sofie next to each other nude. There's a lot of action with this and he gets involved with her friend Sonny, who makes him leave his aunt own house.

This story takes a drastic change and Anne Sofie has to meet Knud Harber to get her pictures into his art gallery. You know what happens before it does. Mikkel meets Tine at and art gallery and you know what happens again. Many changes happen and several more people are killed as a result of what already happens. This is what happens in the story and you must put up with my attempt to tell it. It's full of many interesting facts and you wonder why links happened after the fact. It's what I like in a book. You'll like it too.

[Kirsty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eddie Thomas Petersen's After the Death of Ellen Keldberg has been translated from its original Danish by Toby Bainton. Set in the Danish seaside town of Skagen, which is 'an artists' paradise in summer, but only the locals belong there in winter', a mystery begins to unfold when the dead body of a woman named Ellen Keldberg is discovered on a bench.

Petersen immediately sets the scene, in brief descriptive prose: 'Bluish white, like skimmed milk, the mist seems so near that you could gather it up in your hands. The storm has blown itself out in the night and the wind has dropped, but you can still hear the waves breaking in a hollow roar out by the bay.' There is nothing particularly wrong with the prose here, but I found the conversations to be stilted and unrealistic for the most part, and the majority of the writing which followed too matter-of-fact, and even a little dull at times. The translation used some quite old-fashioned words and phrases which made the novel seem dated.

My expectations were markedly different to what I found within the pages of this novel. Whilst I found the premise of After the Death of Ellen Keldberg interesting enough, for this genre of novel, it felt too slow-going, and plodded along in rather a sluggish manner. The book's blurb proclaims that this is a 'subtle novel... an enthralling family saga, a slow-burning murder mystery, and a portrait of Skagen in the dark and in the snow, full of alliances and old secrets.' Slow is correct. Whilst I was expecting a piece of immersive Nordic Noir, I received something which felt as though it hardly got going.

After the Death of Ellen Keldberg was not at all what I was expecting, and I felt distanced from the characters from the outset. They did not appear particularly interesting to me; nor were they three-dimensional. The entirety of the novel felt rather lacklustre, and I would not rush to read another of Petersen's novels.

[BrokenTune · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was such a weird book.
I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it either.
It is and isn’t a Scandi Noir thriller. Well, maybe more of a mystery, but it is very character-driven and some of the plot doesn’t even make sense to me, such as the ending. There was a scene towards the end that I much appreciated, but it demanded a level of suspended disbelief that I am not sure is appropriate. I am also feeling that the ending didn’t resolve anything.
Was it meant to?
I mean, I don’t need resolution, but I need to know it was meant to be left open-ended.
I also felt that several scenes and characters could have one with better editing, such as maybe consulting an editors opinion on how certain aspects of the book were portrayed.
To say more would be spoiling things.
But, yes, I thought it was an interesting foray into a new-to-me writer’s work, but I am not sure I would have stuck with the book if it had been longer.

[Sara Aye Moung · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting tale, I loved the atmospheric writing.