The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen

This is a really interesting memoir by a woman who could turn a phrase. She says, and I quote, “Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin,” and you can’t get out of it on your own.” In some way this one sentence sums up the story that starts with an unloved child who lives in crushing poverty and without much in the way of supports, one whose ambition and talent lift her up, and then her addiction brings her down so far that she really doesn't completely get over it. She is physically and sexually abused, she values money and career advancement over love, which given her background, she may not fully comprehend, and she dies young. She marries four times. She becomes one of Denmark’s most celebrated poets. Her work is now required reading in Danish schools, and she is recognized as one of the originators of the autofiction genre of the memoir-novel hybrid, with a direct line between Ditlevsen and the power house that is Karl Ove Knausgård.