Childhood

Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can't get out of it on your own.Childhood is dark and it's always moaning like a little animal that's locked in a cellar and forgotten. It comes out of your throat like your breath in the cold, and sometimes it's too little, other times too big. It never fits exactly. It's only when it has been cast off that you can look at it calmly and talk about it like an illness you've survived. Most grownups say that they've had a happy childhood and maybe they really believe it themselves, but I don't think they've just managed to forget it.Wherever you turn, you run up against your childhood and hurt yourself because it's sharp-edged and hard, and stops only when it has torn you completely apart.

If I didn't know this was part of a trilogy, I would probably complain that this lyrical and concise novella/memoir was too slim and that I wanted to spent more time with little Tove, who's too wise for her age and learns too fast that her dreams don't fit into this world. She grows up in a Copenhagen that's still hurting and impoverished after WWI and the Spanish flu. Her mother is very cold towards her, and while her father shows her the occasional kindness he laughs at her when she proclaims that she wants to become a female poet. So she learns to hide herself and her aspirations, and only finds solace in the magic of words.