lagaialettrice's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0


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helvinho's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad fast-paced

3.0

Pra ser honesto, não gostei. É uma biografia interessante por se tratar de uma trajetória excepcional, ascensão e queda. A infância é de uma pobreza e miséria absurdas ao ponto de, sem perceber, eu me tornar meio insensível, quase zangado para que algo interrompesse aquela sequência de tragédias. Tive a mesma vontade de que a fase da dependência acabasse logo e li suas cem páginas com pressa, mas não por impaciência. Aqui a narrativa aqui não tendia à monotonia, era angustiante, dolorosa, penosa. O final é abrupto e me deixou insatisfeito (juro que não porque ele não é feliz, mas também não me importo o suficiente para investigar o porquê). Uns 2/3 do livro, então, foram uma experiência ruim. Se posso dizer que curti algo foi a juventude, com Tove conquistando alguma independência pessoal e financeira, atravessando relacionamentos quebrados e empregos perdidos. Incrível que chegou no fim do livro e eu ainda não tinha me acostumado com a facilidade que eles admitiam ter amantes, começavam e terminavam relacionamentos. Enfim, no geral não gostei muito da escrita da autora e não fiquei com vontade de ler mais nada dela. É isso.

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archrlynn's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

3.75


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milkfran's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

4.75

I deliberately chose Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen Trilogy before I went on a recent trip there: the lives of working class writers always interest me (aka: how do they do it)
and I thought it would be nice to add some literary background to my holiday but I wasn’t prepared for how much it would worm its way under my skin.

Firstly, I’d definitely recommend reading Childhood, Youth and Dependency in one go, as a whole memoir rather than three separate books.
I’ve seen from other people’s reviews that they found Ditlevsen difficult to warm to as a narrator but I enjoyed being in her company and the clear, detached way she describes her life without any justification or excuses. I’m reluctant to ascribe diagnoses to historical figures but the way she talks about experience life in such a detached and lonely way makes me wonder that if she’d been alive today she’d describe herself as neurodivergent.  Long passages of description about the beauty of other women certainly gives queer vibes too…  👀
As a queer neurodivergent teen I’d have painfully copied this quote from the second chapter into my diary in a heartbeat:
“… if you don’t know such a shortcut, childhood must be endured and trudged through hour by hour, through and absolutely interminable number of years. Only death can free you from it, so you think a lot about death, and picture it as a white-robed, friendly angel who some night will kiss your eyelids so that they never will  open again. I always think that when I’m grown-up my mother will finally like me…” [p.28]

Incidentally, people who describe their childhood/teenage years as the best years of their life are always people I’m wary of. Not that Ditlevsen shakes off her childhood and relishes adulthood as an opportunity to to make the best choices (in the end, which of us does?). Still clearly emotionally vulnerable and disempowered she attaches herself to the first men who come along and show interest in her writing as a desperate way to escape her every day life and who can blame her?
She never directly draws the parallels herself between her childhood experiences and string of disappointing men and later addictions but it would be difficult not to read the first two books as a rationalisation of the third.
A few of the books I’ve read recently, Demon Copperhead and Young Mungo deal with addiction and it’s a theme I seem to be drawn to reading about but the Copenhagen trilogy is neither a woe-is-me victim memoir or an angry polemic about the morality of addiction, it occupies a sort of grey area which makes it so refreshing to read.
For a poet, her prose is clear, sharp and immediate as if the events are happening as she’s describing them but also dulled with the detached wisdom of time.

Tove Ditlevsen is more well known in Denmark than she is here in the UK and it seems to be these new translations and release of the trilogy as one book that’s sparked renewed interest in her work as ‘the greatest Danish writer you’ve never heard of’ according to the review by Boyd Tonkin in The Spectator and I’d love for more people to read this one so I can scratch the itch of the passionate need to talk to people about her that reading this book has sparked… 

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chezler24's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

I was not previously familiar with this author's works prior to reading this series of memoirs by her so it was interesting to see this person's life from youth going into adulthood. At moments, it was hard for me to fully connect with Ditlevsen and her choices; however, this could easily be explained by generational and cultural (and honestly just personal) differences. It was interesting to see the development of a woman writer and a poet as she had to deal with a poor upbringing, difficulties being taken seriously, and the expectations of a woman/mother. The turn at the end with the addiction and rehab kind of caught me off guard. Up until then Tove had been able to handle and work through any difficulties, but this particular thing (exacerbated by her husband's psychosis) really hampered her writing and overall quality of life until she was able to find a more stable sense of recovery. Collectively, this is a raw, intimate look into the life of an individual.   

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emilycm's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

with this being my introduction to ditlevsen's writing and life, i am certainly going to explore more of her other work now extensively. there's something so captivating about this set of memoirs, split into three appropriate sections, and i have so many words of how i feel about it. ditlevsen writes with a raw, unapologetic nature that's rough around the edges, but tender and vulnerable in the center. the feeling of this escalates by the third act, dependency, and i felt that everything was just spilling off the page, as if i was in the room watching this woman's life unfold; it's remarkably heartbreaking and beautiful all at once, and i am entirely enamored with her perspective and thought on these experiences she dealt with. there's beauty, pain, and the authentic experience of broken pieces of a life desperately trying to come together written so hauntingly. read this; it will change you.

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okarenhelena's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.75


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greyemk's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced

4.0

I thought this book was excellent, but it also didn’t quite grab me like other recent books have. The prose was exceptional, especially in the childhood section. It read more like a novel than a memoir and I had to continually remind myself this was real. There was some weird pacing, and especially the end wrapped up really quickly. That said, it was still quite captivating and Ditlevsen is clearly an expert at observation of her inner state and it’s relationship with the broader world. I most related to her sense of being an outsider in conflict with her desire for normalcy, and in the quest over ones youth to find ones people.

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