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A review by hetauuu
The Trouble with Happiness: and Other Stories by Tove Ditlevsen
3.0
3.5 stars
The Trouble With Happiness is a combination of two short story collections Ditlevsen originally released in the 50s and 60s. Translated and compilated together in English, this short story collection truly lives up to the name of short story collection - I think there is maybe one story in here that is longer than 10 pages. These stories are very compact, short slices of life set mainly in mid-century Copenhagen, and the vast majority of these stories center the lived experiences of women.
I found this short story collection to be solid, but nothing really stood out for me here. In fairness, nothing stood out to me negatively either. I think the stories here do not necessarily provide anything new to the table if you look at them from the context of the current day, but in the 50s and 60s, writing so openly about women's roles and positions in society, delving into themes such as divorce and abortion, was certainly a much more impressive and scandalous thing to do than nowadays. For that reason, I think these stories need to be appreciated, because it's women like Ditlevsen whose bravery in writing about taboo topics and womanhood has paved the way for the literary landscape of feminist fiction in the 21st century.
While no story amazed me the way a truly brilliant short story often does, I still truly appreciated reading about the experiences of women in a time and place that seems both distant and near. These stories were written and published sixty to seventy years ago, which seems like a long time, but in the grand scheme of things, it is a short time. The way that issues of domestic servitude, lower wages, bodily autonomy and domestic violence persist in today's society goes to show that for equality, sixty to seventy years is a blink of an eye.
I know many people rave about Ditlevsen's Copenhagen trilogy, and The Trouble With Happiness definitely piqued my interest to read those books.
The Trouble With Happiness is a combination of two short story collections Ditlevsen originally released in the 50s and 60s. Translated and compilated together in English, this short story collection truly lives up to the name of short story collection - I think there is maybe one story in here that is longer than 10 pages. These stories are very compact, short slices of life set mainly in mid-century Copenhagen, and the vast majority of these stories center the lived experiences of women.
I found this short story collection to be solid, but nothing really stood out for me here. In fairness, nothing stood out to me negatively either. I think the stories here do not necessarily provide anything new to the table if you look at them from the context of the current day, but in the 50s and 60s, writing so openly about women's roles and positions in society, delving into themes such as divorce and abortion, was certainly a much more impressive and scandalous thing to do than nowadays. For that reason, I think these stories need to be appreciated, because it's women like Ditlevsen whose bravery in writing about taboo topics and womanhood has paved the way for the literary landscape of feminist fiction in the 21st century.
While no story amazed me the way a truly brilliant short story often does, I still truly appreciated reading about the experiences of women in a time and place that seems both distant and near. These stories were written and published sixty to seventy years ago, which seems like a long time, but in the grand scheme of things, it is a short time. The way that issues of domestic servitude, lower wages, bodily autonomy and domestic violence persist in today's society goes to show that for equality, sixty to seventy years is a blink of an eye.
I know many people rave about Ditlevsen's Copenhagen trilogy, and The Trouble With Happiness definitely piqued my interest to read those books.