The Faces

by Tove Ditlevsen

Book Overview

From Tove Ditlevsen, the acclaimed author of the Copenhagen Trilogy, comes The Faces, a searing, haunting novel of a woman on the edge, portrayed with all the vividness of lived experience.

Copenhagen, 1968. Lise, a children's book writer and married mother of three, is increasingly haunted by disembodied faces and voices. She is convinced that her husband, already extravagantly unfaithful, will leave her. Most of all, she...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250838193
• ISBN13: 9781250838193
• Release Date: April 2022
• Publisher: Picador USA
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.0" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

A Beautiful Novel/Memoir About Madness

This autobiographical novel chronicles Lise's bout with psychosis - - hallucinations of faces, paranoid delusions and psychiatric hospitalization. Like the author, Lise is a poet, haunted by her sensual housekeeper, Gitte. The descriptions of madness are realistically and aesthetically rendered, capturing the fear, isolation and intricacy of psychotic illness. This is an incredible book. The reader gains a sense of Lise from the inside looking out as well as the outside looking in. We see her environment and understand the illness and its relation to the rational world. Only someone who had experienced this could have written this book. While my heart went out to Ditlevsen in her pain and suffering, her gift to the reader is immense. This is a beautiful and literary book.