The Days of Bluegrass Love

by Edward van de Vendel, Emma Rault (Translator)

Overview

Tycho Zeling is drifting through his life. Everything in it – school, friends, girls, plans for the future – just kind of … happens. Like a movie he presses play on, but doesn't direct.

So Tycho decides to break away from everything. He flies to America to spend his summer as a counselor at a summer camp, for international kids. It is there that Oliver walks in, another counselor, from Norway.

And it is there that Tycho feels his life stop, and begin again, finally, as his.

The Days of Bluegrass Love was originally published in the Netherlands in 1999. It was a groundbreaking book and has since become a beloved classic throughout Europe, but has never been translated into English. Here, for the first time, it is masterfully presented to American readers – a tender, intense, unforgettable story of first love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646140572
Publisher:	Levine Querido
Publication date:	05/17/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Edward van de Vendel has been a school principal, founder, and teacher. He has won many of the highest prizes for children's literature in the Netherlands, including the Golden Kiss Award for The Days of Bluegrass Love and its two sequels. He has been nominated four times for the international Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Edward lives in Amersfoort, and travels widely.
Emma Rault is a writer of creative non-fiction and an award-winning translator from German and Dutch. She lives in Los Angeles.

Editorial Reviews

05/30/2022

Originally published in 1999, Dutch author Van de Vendel crafts a sensitive portrayal of sexual awakening and queer first love set in Knoxville, Tenn. in this earnest novel, originally published in 1999. When Dutch Tycho Zeling meets Norwegian Oliver Kjelsberg, both 18, on their way to be counselors at an international summer camp, the two become inseparable. During a swimming excursion, Tycho considers that he might be gay, citing his blossoming crush on Oliver, despite never having had feelings for boys prior. With a fellow counselor’s encouragement, Tycho and Oliver giddily launch a tender relationship. After a camp leader warns them to be less obvious with their affections, Oliver convinces Tycho to sneak out, which leads to their employment termination. Instead of returning to Amsterdam, Tycho follows Oliver to Norway, but Oliver’s sudden emotional distance causes their relationship to falter. Their opposing internal journeys, including Oliver’s straightforward interpretation of his own queerness (“I’m just Oliver.... And Tycho Zeling from the Netherlands is the person I want to be with”) and Tycho’s earnest questioning, are thoughtfully examined. Van de Vendel’s compact, deeply introspective tale follows a sedate pace, and the narrative’s subdued approach to conflict allows the boys’ tentative identity exploration to flourish sans traumatic upheaval. Ages 12–up. (May)

Publishers Weekly

...a sensitive portrayal of sexual awakening and queer first love… Van de Vendel’s compact, deeply introspective tale follows a sedate pace, and the narrative’s subdued approach to conflict allows the boys’ tentative identity exploration to flourish sans traumatic upheaval.” — Publishers Weekly

“Originally published in 1999 and translated from the Dutch, I’m thrilled to recommend the best gay romance I’ve read since Boyfriend Material! This swoon-worthy classic has been a hit across the pond for good reason! It’s tender, intense, heartbreaking and exhilarating. In this novel, teens fall in love at summer camp. Their love story makes for an amazing read.” –LitHub, Jacque, Books Are Magic

Best of the Year, Bank Street College

From the Publisher

★ 2022-02-09
The heated beginnings of an international queer romance.

Tycho Zeling has never really thought about the course his life should take. Perhaps that’s why he makes the sudden decision to take a gap year after high school and spend his summer at an international youth camp in Knoxville, Tennessee. In the Amsterdam airport, the Dutch teen happens to meet up with a fellow junior counselor who is headed for the same camp—Oliver Kjelsberg from Norway. The two strike up a fast friendship and end up sharing a tiny supply closet as their camp housing. After Tycho awakens to his feelings for Oliver, what follows seems fantastically inevitable. The boys’ romance rushes along largely in private until the camp director tells them they need to be more discreet. Even though the majority of the staff support them, Oliver and Tycho decide they would rather leave than live inauthentically. They depart for Oliver’s empty house (his mother is on holiday), where Tycho now has the privilege of seeing his boyfriend in his natural habitat, but he still cannot find a place for himself. Dutch author van de Vendel’s writing is poetic, intensely emotional, and sensitively philosophical in this beautiful translation by Rault. This book, originally published in 1999, is described in the author’s note as standing in defiance of the old trend of depressing, fatalistic queer literature; it leaves readers with an open ending that leans strongly toward the optimistic.

An enduring story populated with endearing characters. (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews