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Tove Ditlevsen, trans. by Tiina Nunnally and Michael Favala Goldman
Rave Ploughshares What Tove aspires to, even if only instinctually, is far beyond the scope of her mother’s experience and knowledge. Her mother’s aggression is not only the result of being reminded that certain facts of life are unalterable (such as having a daughter at a young age), but also, more importantly, the result of feeling that Tove can escape indisputable facts by turning to poetry ... In the volumes that follow, Tove will go on attempting to become one of her mother’s social betters, even as her mother will go on attempting to help her secure a safe life that resembles her own. What makes Ditlevsen’s memoir so powerful is that it does not avoid difficult questions about the relationship between women’s bodies, cultural capital, and social class. Nor does Ditlevsen suppress Tove’s social and material aspirations. Tove wants to be a poet not only because she wants to see her name in print, but also because she realizes that to be a poet is to have a life different from her mother’s—to escape her mother literally rather than figuratively ... In showing that Tove’s life has been upended by such attempts at normalization, the beauty of Ditlevsen’s memoir lies in the fact that no narrative can encompass a life fully, or explain it away. One of the points Ditlevsen makes is that, inside the Tove of Youth and Dependency , there is still the Tove of Childhood. This Tove, like her mother, is “beautiful, untouchable, lonely,” the poet who understands that life is the sum of everyday occurrences, of trivial, inconsequential, ephemeral, and ordinary experiences and observations
Ali Smith
Positive Ploughshares Despite describing contemporary realities like Brexit, the refugee crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the present time of the novel—and of the quartet—turns out to uncannily resemble its pasts (both pre- and post-war) ... The last book of her quartet offers many ways of thinking about this warmest of seasons, but none take precedence over the other.