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lagaialettrice's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Drug abuse, Antisemitism, Emotional abuse, Drug use, Medical trauma, Toxic relationship, War, Abortion, Addiction, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual violence, Alcohol, Gaslighting, and Mental illness
Minor: Incest and Misogyny
yilliun's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Drug abuse, Infidelity, Addiction, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: War and Abortion
Minor: Classism
This book deals heavily with themes of addiction and drug abuse, especially once Carl enters the picture.milkfran's review against another edition
4.75
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…
Graphic: Abortion, Medical content, Addiction, Sexual assault, Mental illness, and Medical trauma
Minor: War
klor's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Addiction
Moderate: War
m_sotos's review against another edition
3.5
Graphic: Abortion, Addiction, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, and Toxic relationship
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and War
kabina_prysznicowa's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Addiction and War
chezler24's review against another edition
4.0
Moderate: Addiction, Medical content, Abortion, Death, and Pregnancy
Minor: Medical trauma, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual content, Terminal illness, and War
dominicangirl's review against another edition
4.75
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Infertility, Drug abuse, and Addiction
Moderate: Death, Sexual harassment, and Cancer
Minor: War, Abortion, and Alcoholism
okarenhelena's review against another edition
4.75
Graphic: Abortion, Addiction, Drug abuse, and Drug use
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Cancer, and Eating disorder
Minor: Mental illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Infidelity, War, Abandonment, Self harm, Pregnancy, Misogyny, Medical content, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Antisemitism, Chronic illness, Medical trauma, Classism, and Vomit
miaaisha's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Abortion, Drug use, and Drug abuse
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship and Toxic relationship
Minor: War, Pregnancy, and Infidelity