From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister
For three years, Tove Ditlevsen, one of Denmark's favorite writers, was unable to write. Then six words appeared to her: "in the morning there was hope." These became the first words of her autobiography, Early Spring, fitting for a book that spares the reader none of the squalid details of Tove Ditlevsen's first eighteen years, yet is filled with beauty and aspirations. Tove Ditlevsen grew up in a Danish working-class neighborhood, the child of constantly arguing and often impoverished parents. There was no physical privacy, and yet her way of thinking and love of words kept her apart from her harsh and domineering mother, her father who loved her yet told her that "girls can't be poets," and her friends who were mostly interested in sex and stealing. While the details of her life can be harsh, Tove Ditlevsen portrays her neighborhood and family with well-considered love: "Down in the bottom of my childhood my father stands laughing. He's big and black and old like the stove, but there is nothing about him that I'm afraid of." Telling her story primarily through the consciousness of herself as a child and then as an adolescent, Tove Ditlevsen recreates the naive, touching egotism of her youth. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14.
Language Notes
Text: English, Danish (translation)
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- 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader's Guide by Erica Bauermeister on page 120, and page 124
- To Live and to Write: Selections by Japanese Women Writers 1913-1938 (Women in Translation) by Yukiko Tanaka in Back Matter
- Time Out Copenhagen by Time Out Guides Ltd in Back Matter
- Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross (Penguin Classics) by Sigrid Undset in Front Matter
- Nervous Conditions: A Novel by Tsitsi Dangarembga in Front Matter
See all 8 books citing this book
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