Name: Matvei's review of The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
Item: The Copenhagen Trilogy
Rating: 5
Author: Matvei

Tove Ditlevsen

Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This single-volume hardcover contains all three volumes of her memoirs Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and The Copenhagen Trilogy (1969–71) is her acknowledged masterpiece. Childhood tells the story of a misfit child’s single-minded determination to become a poet; Youth describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband. Throughout, the narrator grapples with the tension between her vocation as a writer and her competing roles as daughter, wife, mother, and drug addict, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today’s discussions around feminism. Ditlevsen’s trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family and growing up—in this sense, it’s Copenhagen's answer to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction. Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories and memoirs before committing suicide in 1976. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class, female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark's most important modern authors, with "Tove fever" gripping readers.

Childhood; Youth; Dependency

The Copenhagen Trilogy

Shelby Doherty

My father and Mr. Krogh say that the Nazis started it themselves, and if I have any opinion at all, it's to agree with them. But most of all, I'm terrified - as if the swells from the great ocean of the world could capsize my fragile little ship at any moment. I don't like reading the newspapers anymore.

Hitler has come to power in Germany. My father says that it's the reactionaries who've won and that the Germans don't deserve any better since they voted for him themselves. Mr. Krogh calls it a catastrophe for the whole world and is gloomy and depressed as if from some personal sorrow

Matvei

Natalie

Called "a masterpiece" by The New York Times, the acclaimed trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing Tove Ditlevsen is today celebrated as one of the most important and unique voices in twentieth-century Danish literature, and The Copenhagen Trilogy (1969–71) is her acknowledged masterpiece. Childhood tells the story of a misfit child’s single-minded determination to become a poet; Youth describes her early experiences of sex, work, and independence. Dependency picks up the story as the narrator embarks on the first of her four marriages and goes on to describe her horrible descent into drug addiction, enabled by her sinister, gaslighting doctor-husband. Throughout, the narrator grapples with the tension between her vocation as a writer and her competing roles as daughter, wife, mother, and drug addict, and she writes about female experience and identity in a way that feels very fresh and pertinent to today’s discussions around feminism. Ditlevsen’s trilogy is remarkable for its intensity and its immersive depiction of a world of complex female friendships, family and growing up—in this sense, it’s Copenhagen's answer to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels. She can also be seen as a spiritual forerunner of confessional writers like Karl Ove Knausgaard, Annie Ernaux, Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy. Her trilogy is drawn from her own experiences but reads like the most compelling kind of fiction. Born in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen in 1917, Ditlevsen became famous for her poetry while still a teenager, and went on to write novels, stories and memoirs before committing suicide in 1976. Having been dismissed by the critical establishment in her lifetime as a working-class, female writer, she is now being rediscovered and championed as one of Denmark's most important modern authors, with "Tove fever" gripping readers.

She has such a way with words...something I lack...so all I will say is not a page went by where I didn't want to give her a hug and i burst into tears when I closed this book.

Stas

Sohini Roy

i kept wondering why the third part of this trilogy was called dependency. i get it now

“None of [them] can stand the song in my heart or the garlands of words in my soul.“

Margo Koss

Read this compulsively and felt like I was in the author's head the whole ride. The last third of the memoir  (as she went through severe addiction) was particularly gripping. 

Sarah Erle

alina s

Katie Chua

so full of life; moments of hope, magic, mystery, disappointment, and then absolute devastation

Natalie &
The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

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Natalie &The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

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Natalie &
The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen