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A review by brianlarson
Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen
5.0
Piercingly insightful and traumatically sad. This is the first work by Tove I’ve read (Youth & Dependency are up next!).
Tove switches narrative voice many times and uses this scheme to disorient readers while she traces the impact of intergenerational trauma on her “Childhood.”
“You can't get out of 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. You're standing talking to another girl whose childhood smells of coal and ashes, and suddenly she takes a step back because she has noticed the terrible stink of your childhood. 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. You can't tell by looking at them that they've had a childhood, and you don't dare ask how they managed to make it through without their faces getting deeply scarred and marked by it.”
Tove switches narrative voice many times and uses this scheme to disorient readers while she traces the impact of intergenerational trauma on her “Childhood.”
“You can't get out of 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. You're standing talking to another girl whose childhood smells of coal and ashes, and suddenly she takes a step back because she has noticed the terrible stink of your childhood. 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. You can't tell by looking at them that they've had a childhood, and you don't dare ask how they managed to make it through without their faces getting deeply scarred and marked by it.”