Bornholm Night-Ferry

For the five years of their adulterous love affair, Finn Fitzgerald and Elin Marstrander spend only 47 days and nights together. At each of their too few meetings--"in Spain or London, or on the tiny island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, which serves as their last refuge--"they try to conjure a reality that will merge with the passion of the letters they exchange in between. Out of their long periods of separation bursts an erotic, jealous, and intense world of longing and regret. Elin, a Danish poet, and Fitz, an Irish novelist, write, often within the same line, both beautiful descriptions of their love and evocative jabs of cruelty. In the whirling world of their letters they attempt to create a haven of the imagination, an "opposite land," where they can enjoy their love in a calm they cannot find in their daily lives. But as reality--"their lovers and their children; their failures and regrets--"seeps in, their relationship inevitably crumbles: "The dream ends."