Book Review: Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst — Ensemble Casts, Existential Dread, and the Question of How We're Supposed to Live

Prose Society with Eli Rallo

Host Eli Rallo reviews the debut novel 'Waist Deep' by Danish author Linea Maja Ernst. The episode explores the dynamics of an ensemble cast

Key takeaways

• Author Linea M/a Ernst wrote the entire novel by hand in a notebook.
• The book was inspired by Ernst's critique of Sally Rooney's 'beige' sex scenes.

Main topics

• Book Review: Waist Deep
• Character Analysis

Notable quotes

Who makes the rules for how we live our lives and which is the right way?

Conclusion

A deeply relatable exploration of the anxieties of modern adulthood an

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:07) Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Pro Society Podcast. It's our book review episode. We're talking about Waste Deep today. Okay, there will be spoilers. We are in the Red Room, which is my favorite place to give spoilers. And for a small book, there's a lot there. You guys know, like, it's hard for me to review these books. I'm like, I love the books that I'm choosing for the pod. This book specifically, though, like I find flawless. I'm going to talk about a lot of the critiques that people are giving. I think it's flawless. Like I understand why it was such a smashing success in Scandinavia in general. I understand why they translated it. I think it's such a good translation because it feels non-American to me. But I can't put my finger on it. I'm like, I can tell that the translation is really true to text and true to form and like true to the feeling of the original. Being a translator is like such a cool. an interesting job. We should definitely interview a translator. If somebody wants to come on the pod that translates books, that would be sick. But anyways, there's a lot there for a book this short. It's like 200 pages. And it's really true genre literary fiction, like by definition lit fic, and it's incredible. This is my exact type of book. Like, that's why I wanted to share it with all of you. It is people talking Denmark, like... Give it to me, Rachel. Like, it's people talking. And I love people talking. I also find myself inherently fascinated by media that is ensemble-based. I just fucking love an ensemble cast. I love Friends. I love New Girl. I love Gossip. I love when you get bored of one character, so you're immediately able to sink into the storyline of another, but the storylines are all kind of interconnected. I love that if one is annoying you, you just got to read a little bit more, and then you're going to be on to the next. You know, like, I personally didn't adore Sylvia. Like, I'm going to be honest. Like, I struggled with our girl. But my time with her, like, it felt somewhat limited in the sense that, you know, there would be a reprieve when I would get out of her head for a sec. But it's also like sex in the city. Like, you'd be ready to kill Carrie for something. And then there's Samantha being perfect or Charlotte being right. And by the way, I'm a Carrie apologist. You guys know that. But, like, that's what I'm saying. Like, you. With an ensemble cast, you get these moments of like a break when someone's annoying you. And it just makes the characters like when they're gone from the page, gone from the screen, you get the chance to think about them and fill in blanks or think about how they would be reacting to situations. And I think that that's just like the brilliance of an ensemble cast. Like it does kind of the work for you in that like. removing a character from the scene is as important as having them present. And in removing them, you kind of get to think about, like, how would this person interact with this situation or how are they going to react when they find out about it? It really reminds me of reading a play. It would be such a good play. And I mean, I know, like... Midsummer Night's Dream is like the one-to-one comp and that is a play. But like, I don't want to see this as a movie. I want to see it as a play. I, even the cast of characters in the beginning, like, which at first, I'm not going to lie, I continuously referred to that just to be like, okay, who is who? But like, It's like White Lotus meets Midsummer Night's Dream, girls-esque bantery humor. And it's just like extremely cinematic, messy and horny. And it would be a perfect play. If somebody wants to adapt this into a play, I frankly don't think that there's that much that we would have to like. It would be a long play. I think we could like cut it down a little bit. But like we could make this a banging play. It would do so well summer opening on Broadway. Spring, summer, little pre-Tony's, limited run, small cast, intimate. And like no set. Like not to be like Jamie Lloyd, but like no set. Because like I just think like it's too much. And I think we could convey it without conveying it. Limited props. But costumes. Anyways, it should be a play. I'm obsessed with this. If you've forgotten a brief overview of our book or if you didn't read it and you're just listening to this, thanks. But also like. Read it. It's five friends from university and their partners go to spend seven days at an idyllic lake house in Denmark. It's really a chance to catch up and reminisce, but then tensions begin to rise as old feelings of love and lust are uncovered. And it winds up being a story that asks the question, who makes the rules for how we live our lives and which is the right way? Which, like, I don't know how old everybody is, but I'm 28. And I'm like, yeah, who does make the rules for how we live our lives and which way is the right way? I mean, on our culture catch up last week, I was talking about, like, motherhood and like my feelings about like that and like I it's just like such a thing of like you know some people get married and they have kids right away and like that's their journey and then other people wait and then other people don't have children at all and it it's this thing of like I kind of want to be everything like I do relate to Sylvia in that sense where I'm like I kind of want to do everything and try everything and be everywhere but like you can't like the underlying thing of the book is like you have to choose something at some point like you can't really be everything to everyone in every Where? But anyway, I wanted to talk a little bit about the author. Linnea Maya Ernst, I believe that's exactly how you pronounce her name, is a staff writer at the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen. Weekendavisen. I don't know how to pronounce that. I'm so sorry. Where she writes about literature, pop culture, and private life. Waste Deep is her debut novel. And this is a crazy fucking story to how she came to writing this novel. She wrote a review of Beautiful World, Where Are You?, which is Sally Rooney's third book. In the review, she said she found some parts beige. Rooney's characters, who are from the same generation as Ernst, she claimed had joyless sex. Ernst is 37, by the way. She said the sex scenes were low-fat kink. And she did ultimately say she liked the book, but she did not like how Rooney wrote about sex and intimacy. That's my least favorite of Rooney's novels as a big Sally Rooney fan. But a Danish publisher called her and was like, OK, girl, if you think Sally Rooney's sex scenes are so beige, could you do it better? And she was like, hell yeah. Isn't that crazy? Like, I love a story like that. It's crazy. And then she writes the novel by hand. This woman is insane. I love her. She writes a novel by hand, filling a notebook at a local library. And at night. She would read the draft to her wife and offer suggestions. And like, this is not meant to be a dig. It feels like it was written by hand. Like, it's so grounded and intentional and like, in only the way something written by hand could be. I love it. I love it. Ernst is also polyamorous and married to a woman. They have two kids. I guess throughout their relationship, they've broken up a lot because her wife did not want to be polyamorous and she wanted to have more than one connection, but then they kept getting back together. And... I guess basically like they haven't really come up with a solution for that situation. In the New York Times, she said, I want Amanda, that's her wife, but I want free love and I want both. Aaronstead laughing, so I'll just live here. They haven't really figured out what they're doing. They just know they're doing it together. That was in the New York Times. I feel like that gives really interesting color to the whole thing now that you know that about her. Like she sees each other with Sylvia. And with all of them, I think. There's aspects of her. As usual, let's break this down by people,