Detachment

Throughout all three books of The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove's frequent dissatisfaction with her life, leads her to seek out modes of detachment. In "Childhood," as a young girl, Tove sees the world as "cold and dangerous and ominous" (6). In order to escape this unease, often caused by her mother's violent moods, her father's perpetual joblessness, her brother's irritability, or the terrifying unknown of life beyond her street, Tove retreats into her head. Sometimes she lets "mysterious words" crawl across her "soul like a protective membrane" (6). To Tove, it does not matter if the words belong to a song or a poem. Either way, they are always "soothing and rhythmic and immensely pensive, but never distressing or sad" because, she says, "the rest of my day would be distressing and sad" (6). Though she is not yet 10 in this passage, Tove already recognizes language as a means of...