"The Copenhagen Trilogy" by Tove Ditlevsen

The Copenhagen Trilogy is a collection of three short books by the Danish poet and author Ditlevsen, who was famous in her home country in the mid-20th century and died by suicide in 1976. Like most Americans, I had never heard of Ditlevsen, and though she acknowledges her success as an author in Trilogy, her professional success is not the real focus of the book. Instead, the book provides unusual insight into a complicated figure. She was extraordinarily ambitious and felt most at home when writing. We know she lived for her art, but of her art, we hear little. Instead, but most of the book focuses on her intimate relationships--her ambivalent relationship with her mother; her four husbands; and, finally, her drug addiction.

The first book in the trilogy, Childhood, has a foggy sense of helplessness. It reminded me intensely of the young narrators in Elena Ferrante novels, and I had to laugh when I read two reviews that both said the same thing. Youth is focused on her pursuit of romantic and professional success, though Ditlevsen doesn't separate the two much, as her first marriage is a sexless one to a much-older publisher. Dependency is the most affecting part of the novel, as her third husband Carl turns her into a drug addict and her life spirals. Ditlevsen describes this descent dispassionately. There's no attempt to turn herself into a victim or to ask for the reader's sympathy. Instead, she neutrally describes the absolute primacy of drug addiction in her life. It superseded everything, including her children and her work. She undergoes a needless surgery, which leaves her deaf in one ear, in order to secure more drugs. She has all the help money, fame, and love can provide, and none of it matters. Ditlevsen and her fourth husband have to flee Copenhagen to try to save her. On the last page she writes she was finally "rescued from [her] years of addiction," but even without foreknowledge of her suicide five years after the book's publication, the reader knows the assertion is hollow. Ditlevsen does too. After all, the book ends not with the generic absolution, but instead with this grim declaration: "the shadow of the old longing still returns faintly if I have to have a blood test, or if I pass a pharmacy window. It will never disappear completely for as long as I live" (370).

It was this chilling awareness that made the last third of the book so powerful for me. I've read a number of novels about addiction, but none with total clarity of Ditlevsen. She knows the destruction of the drugs. And she also knows she will not resist them if given the opportunity.

Ditlevsen is a complicated figure, and it's often hard to be sympathetic to her. She easily switches from one husband to the next, and she seems to care little for others, including her children. It would be interesting to hear, from an outside point of view, what made her so famous in Denmark, as there's nothing in the book to endear her to the reader. Yet The Copenhagen Trilogy is still a captivating read of a deeply troubled woman.

"All My Rage" by Sabaa Tahir

It's been awhile since I've read YA fiction, and there's some pleasure in sinking into the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Of course, like a lot of YA these days, All My Rage isn't about simple issues like high school gossip or first crushes. In fact, it grapples with a huge range of issues: immigration, racism, alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual assault, and domestic abuse. Its two protagonists are Noor and Salahudin, children of Pakistani parents who have been best friends since childhood. Their tumultuous backgrounds and current trauma intersect throughout the novel amid their love for each other. 

One of the elements the novel does best is acknowledge and take seriously its characters' anger. It can be easy to dismiss the strong feelings of teenagers as frivolous, but Noor and Salahudin have a lot to be angry about, suffering within structures outside of their control.

There are some things the novel does poorly. Like a lot of teen fiction, it get most about the college admissions process wrong and furthers the idea that the only colleges that exist are the top-twenty elite ones. Its primary villains--Noor's uncle Chachu and racist classmate Jamie--are broadly defined and one-dimensional. It has a pat ending, with villains getting comeuppance and heroes getting the happy ending.

But to be fair, I don't think the novel would have been improved with a grim ending. In fact, I was so anxious I skipped ahead a hundred pages and read the end to be sure all would be okay. Even with a reassuring ending, Tahir is still able to address a number of issues thoughtfully and with nuance.

"The Great Circle" by Maggie Shipstead

I enjoyed The Great Circle quite a bit. I rooted for Marian Graves' happy ending, even when all seemed dim (I didn't care as much about actress Hadley's parts of the story). But I've been thinking about the novel's protagonist--a lone wolf who never says goodbye (or hello, really). Her aloofness and reticence to discuss her feelings are key elements of her personality, something those who love her--her brother Jamie, her neighbor-turned-lover Caleb--are forced to accept. In some ways this stoicism, in a woman, in the early 20th century, feels a little heroic. But in the end I'm left feeling how not-heroic it is. Her lover Ruth dies never hearing Marian's feelings for her. Her lover Caleb pines after her his entire life. Her niece doesn't even get to know her. Obviously an individual has no obligation to another. But ignoring those who love us, and whom we love, does make us a jerk. Shipstead certainly acknowledges Marian's many failings, and I don't think authors must or should write entirely admirable characters, and yet... 

For what it's worth, the Marian-Barclay-Caleb triangle gave me a lot of Twilight vibes.