Eighteen-year-old Roxana planned to study abroad in Paris with her best friend, but an administrative error forces her to travel unaccompanied to Copenhagen instead, where she meets Søren, her 28-year-old tour guide. After two days of beers and sightseeing, Roxana and Søren fall for each other and she agrees to join him for the rest of the summer in a small town in Jutland, where Søren will write his Ph.D. thesis. There, Roxana experiences a new world of sex and domesticity. She passes the days by herself, tending to the apartment and to her own bodily desires, while nights are for wine, hash and each other. But Søren soon reveals his anger, self-loathing and racist views, inspiring Roxana to seek out an immigrant stranger she has seen in town.
Lisa Locascio's debut novel, Open Me, is a portrait of sensual self-discovery. Roxana isn't far removed from adolescence and Locascio writes expertly about girlhood--the changing physicality, the intimacy of friendship, the evolving family relationships and the indignities of high school. In Denmark, Roxana's mind is more one-track: "I was lost... in the world of my body," she says, and Locascio depicts each scene with intense details. Søren and Roxana's relationship is complicated--not forced, though certainly ill-advised--which makes it seem even more real. As she opens up to new feelings of closeness and desire, she also experiences the almost palpable sensation of being crushed by someone else's emotions. Through it all, Roxana is getting to know herself, internally and externally, as an adult, as a lover and as an American. --Katy Hershberger, freelance writer and bookseller