Tove Ditlevsen’s Childhood, Youth, Dependency, also known as The Copenhagen Trilogy, is a memoir that offers a vivid glimpse into what it was like to grow up in a working-class family as a girl, then a woman in Denmark during the mid-1900s. Through her personal story in this book, you will also get a clear sense of how society treated women at the time.

There are many details in the book that feel deeply unjust. Things that would be completely unacceptable in (most) societies today, yet were considered normal back then. They sound wild now, but were just quietly accepted at the time. Ditlevsen doesn’t rant or explain why they’re wrong. She simply shares them as they were. And somehow, that makes them hit even harder.

What surprised me most was how deeply I felt while reading it. I expected to be interested but I didn’t expect to be moved. Her writing isn’t dramatic or flashy, but it’s full of quiet emotion. There’s something about her writing that really attracts you and stays with you. My brain reacted like I was reading a novel, even though I knew this was a memoir. I was truly immersed in her world.

I picked this up from the library on a whim, not knowing much about it. But just a few pages in, I knew I had to get my own copy. I have this little mental shelf of books I borrow, then realize I need to keep. And this one earned its place there almost immediately.

To give you an idea of how into it I was: I read the entire thing while sitting in a not-so-comfy corner of the library. I didn’t move for over three hours. No checking the time, no breaks. Just completely absorbed. That’s how powerful this memoir is.

My Favorite Bits

In the meantime, there exist certain facts. (..) I know every person has their own truth just as every child has their own childhood. (..) Fortunately, things are set up so that you can keep quiet about the truths in your heart; but the cruel, gray facts are written in the school records and in the history of the world and in the law and in the church books. No one can change them and no one dares to try either.

Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood, Youth, Dependency

(..) You can’t get out of a childhood, and it clings to you like a bad smell. You notice it in other children–each childhood has its own smell. You don’t recognize your own and sometimes you’re afraid that it’s worse than others’. (..) On the sly, you observe the adults whose childhood lies inside them, torn and full of holes like a used and moth-eaten rug no one thinks about anymore or has any use for.

Tove Ditlevsen, Childhood, Youth, Dependency