Three books in one, Tove Ditlevsen’s Copenhagen trilogy was a revelation!
A well-known Danish poet and writer, Ditlevsen tracks her life growing up in Copenhagen, grafting, writing, and figuring out relationships across three novels. I’m so glad I found her and I want to read her poetry now.
Childhood was incredibly nostalgic
Youth a great coming-of-age story
Dependency, the final one, took a dark turn into addiction. In fact, it’s a pretty intense description of it, one I was not expecting at all.
In hindsight I think you can see the threads of trauma running through all three books, but it’s interesting how they also stand alone as discrete pieces.
I feel like this trilogy is perfect for when you want go look back at your life and childhood, figure out some things. They also look at marriage, babies, and women’s roles and relationships from an interesting lens. There is also a struggling writer narrative here I think a lot of us can relate to. As they are short, they also feel like relatively easy reads despite the dark subject matter. But yeah, major TW on the last one.
Great read for lovers of Scandinavia too; having visited Copenhagen that was part of their charm too.
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