The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency
Written by Tove Ditlevsen
Narrated by Stine Wintlev
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
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 program 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 unfolds 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.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Tove Ditlevsen
Tove Ditlevsen was born in 1917 in a working-class neighborhood in Copenhagen. Her first volume of poetry was published when she was in her early twenties and was followed by many more books, including the three volumes of the Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood (1967), Youth (1967), and Dependency (1971). She died in 1976.
Related to The Copenhagen Trilogy
Related audiobooks
Burnt Sugar Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Clever Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Second Place: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Mother: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Should a Person Be? Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Double Blind: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Friends & Dark Shapes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAsymmetry: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Free Love: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pure Colour: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Costalegre Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Flamethrowers: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Afterparties: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Likes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Indelicacy: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Pond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Companion Piece: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fight Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Optic Nerve Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Topeka School: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Magician: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ducks, Newburyport Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mars Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trust Exercise: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There But For The Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Artful Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doxology: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Personal Memoirs For You
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pageboy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Own It All: How to Stop Waiting for Change and Start Creating It. Because Your Life Belongs to You. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wishful Drinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Stay Married Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not My Father's Son: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: My Year of Psychedelics: Lessons on Better Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: Built for This: The Quiet Strength of Powerlifting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making It So: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lucy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Copenhagen Trilogy
30 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I enjoyed this book for the voice of the author and the voice of the narrator. I hadn’t listened to a book narrated in English by someone who is not a native speaker, but it really worked well in these memoirs.