The Days of Bluegrass Love by Edward van de Vendel
This is a young adult novel, very tenderly written, in which Tycho and Oliver encounter one another on the way to an international camp in Tennessee. They are immediately overtaken by each other and fall into a relationship that is quickly and quietly physical. To Tycho, whom we inhabit during the reading, this feels like the most wonderful change ever to take place in the world, an event that makes everything else perfect and new and bright. Then the problems set in. People cannot quite take the knowledge that these two boys are together, and the boys are not able to accept a need to be quiet or to hide, not quite. At least not while they are on foreign soil. Tycho is Dutch and Oliver is Norwegian, so the American landscape figures into their discovery that their love for each other does not work in the daylight, not for most people. The story follows them to Oliver’s house and then further, through Oliver’s struggle with how to deal with Tycho at home, among his friends and teammates. The story is delicately told. The early part of the novel felt so simple it was almost childlike, but that feeling quickly fades when the idyllic part of the romance comes to an end. The choice whether to keep hold of one another or to let the world separate them comes so quickly into play that it feels tragic. The novel rises to the challenge of this conflict but always in that simple, quiet tone, with one plain fact leading to another. The book depicts the flood tide of new love in Tycho with clarity and quickness. The whole novel is over in a breath. This book was published first in 1998; I am very grateful to have found it now, in this lovely translation.