This memoir makes you glad for the invention of the internet. Tove is a working class teenage girl who is moving between various depressing and menial jobs while trying to become a poet. (Poetry obviously being the most direct route out of poverty).
Her problem is she knows no one who is even tangentially associated with poetry or publishing, so spends her time moping around cleaning floors by day and drinking soda pop with sweaty young men by night. The whole time I just felt like screaming : just google it! But it is unfortunately 1945. Tim Berners-Lee won’t even be born for another ten years.
The first book in the trilogy, CHILDHOOD, was a sadder book than this one, which covers her adolescence. Unlike most people, she was happier as a teen than as a child. She has some money of her own and no longer has to live with her parents. Some would call this exploiting underage labour, she calls it freedom. Eventually she manages to connect with someone who publishes a journal, and he publishes one of her poems. She is so thrilled that the book ends with her considering marrying him, despite him being old and fat.
I hope she doesn’t do it, but I suspect she will. The final book in the trilogy is called a Danish word which means both poison and marriage. Signs are not good. I’ll report back when I get there.