Hux's Reviews > Childhood / Youth / Dependency

It's difficult to review a book which you enjoyed but which had a protagonist (the writer) who you increasingly found to be deeply unpleasant. By the end of the book, my sympathies for Tove Ditlevsen, even this fictionalised version of her, were disappearing quickly, until almost wafer thin, and my irritation at her mercurial character and self-indulgent behaviours became intense. But none of that, however, was really an issue until the third part of the book.

Childhood (1967)
The first section was very enjoyable, the book starts with her working-class childhood in 1920s Copenhagen, her parents, her brother, her formative years (especially the relationship with her mother). The writing is magnificent, both fluid and concise, and Ditlevsen builds a world and a life through her upbringing which vibrates with colour and interest. She immediately bonds with her father, an emotionally distant but ultimately thoughtful man (a union man with Marxist sympathies who idolises Prime Minister Stauning). Her mother, on the other hand, is a busy-body, concerned with what the neighbours might say, their activities, and the social expectations of her class. Meanwhile, Tove, even at a precociously young age, develops an interest in writing and poetry in particular. I enjoyed this opening book a lot.

Youth (1967)
The second section sees Tove watch as her brother leave home, marries a woman, while her aunt's ill health grows worse, and her father struggles to find gainful employment. The Nazis have arrived on the German landscape, but have yet to make an impact on her life, and Tove has a burgeoning interest in boys and the romantic idea of falling in love. Her interest in literature continues unabated and she secretly writes poetry whilst working in a variety of dull office jobs. She later meets Mr Krogh, a middle-aged, overweight man who takes an interest in her poetry but not her (something she appears to resent). Then she meets Viggo, another middle-aged man, who publishes her poems in his magazine. And another potential love interest.

Dependency (1971)
Tove finds herself now married to Viggo and is acquiring a degree of success for her work. She realises it's a marriage of convenience, lacking the passion she craves, and she leaves him for a man named Piet. This is where the book started to lose me, Tove's behaviour becoming increasingly capricious and self-involved. She meets and marries a man named Ebbe and seems to have found the genuine romance and passion she wants and she has her first child (and her first abortion). But she later leaves him for Carl for no discernible reason other than boredom. Then comes a random man she drunkenly sleeps with leading to yet another abortion. Then Jabbe. Then Victor. The war ends and Tove develops and addiction to Demerol and Methodone and spirals into dependency in more ways than one.

The writing overall is very good though it sometimes touches on events which add very little to the narrative; I found the whole thing very easy to read and, for the most part, highly accomplished. There is an optimism and hope in the first two sections which is utterly annihilated by the time we get to the third. The book gives you a complete life, a complete picture, but leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth. As I said at the start, I increasingly disliked Tove as the narrative went along, and found her mercurial, immoral behaviour hard to fathom. Her childhood seemed perfectly reasonable to me, neither glowingly happy nor traumatically awful, and it certainly can't be used to justify her sexual promiscuity, selfishness, or drug use. By the end of the book, you lose track of all the men she cheats on, the abortions, the new men that come and go, and yet Tove always seems to see herself as the victim. I'm aware that we're suppose to interpret this as some kind of feminist empowerment narrative (because when aren't we?), but it simply comes across as repugnant and a little pathetic, leaving us with a woman who is painfully self-involved and incapable of meaningful empathy for other people.

We have the law of love on our side, he said. That law, I said, kissing him, gives us the right to hurt other people

You could interpret that quote as ironic but I don't think so (certainly not in the context of her youth). That particular Tove Ditlevsen fundamentally believes that you should love people only until you're bored. In that respect, it's less a comment about her and more as a comment about the permissive nature of modernity. The book is yet another reminder that the poisonous liberalism of the 1960s was actually reaching its tentacles into western civilisation long before that decade ever came about. In many ways, that's what the entire book is about, her inability to pair bond, to connect meaningfully to another human being, to delay gratification, to embrace adulthood and its complex responsibilities. Each man represents a father who might keep her in line, offer her stability. Unpleasant characters don't usually concern me very much (they're usually the most compelling) but the fact that this is her real story, albeit fictionalised, gives it a coating of something unsavoury. The final book did sort of pull the rug from beneath me. I dunno, I just came away from this thing with a terrible sense of misery and annoyance at the modern world, and at the people who were instrumental in creating it. Despite finding the reading experience highly satisfying, I was left feeling enormously judgemental about her by the end, her actions, her morals, her selfish choices.

I'm aware that being judgemental about people is not something we're supposed to do anymore. But maybe it should be.