The Trouble With Happiness" by Tove Ditlevsen is a collection of short stories that provides a glimpse into the lives of ordinary individuals in mid-twentieth-century Copenhagen. The book offers an interesting perspective on happiness, its complexities, and the personal sacrifices one has to make to achieve it.

Although the collection lacked cohesion, I found the storytelling to be captivating and thought-provoking. The diverse range of characters and their experiences added depth to the narrative and kept me engaged throughout the book. I particularly enjoyed the dispassionate tone of the author's writing, which added a unique charm to the stories.

Overall, "The Trouble With Happiness" is a great read for those who enjoy character-driven stories and are looking for a fresh perspective on the human experience. While the collection may not be for everyone, I would recommend it to those who appreciate thoughtful and introspective literature. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

Tov Ditlevsen's short stories reveal a darkness in relationships that's both intriguing and frustrating, as the characters are all dealing with trouble and sadness. That said, I enjoy her writing style and felt drawn in by the perspectives, even when they show a side of human nature that unappealing. The brevity with which some of the stories are told works really well, creating a small image of the problems at hand. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* This was a great, different read! don't normally read short stories let alone translated ones but this was a nice change of pace!

These quiet, heartbreaking stories show us glimpses into lives of stoic dissatisfaction. Even the most heartbreaking tales are delivered in direct, non-dramatic prose, just the facts, ma'am, and I don't know if the flatness of the tone comes from the fact that they are by a Danish author or from the flatness that often characterizes the delivery of traumatic memories. Either way, these stories, recently translated by Michael Goldman, build incrementally the feeling of hopelessness that plagues so many of our lives, while also making the solution clear: happiness is a choice that too few of us make, searching as we always are for something more.

From listening to Tove Ditlevsen’s short story collection, translated by Michael Favala Goldman and narrated by Stine Wintlev, I can safely conclude the trouble with happiness is it’s elusive and unlikely. Certainly, the characters in these stories make conventional choices about achieving happiness, marriage, children, a modest income, simple, easy, no? No, says Ditlevsen, and she’s right, these choices aren’t simple, aren’t likely to offer bliss and satisfaction; except Ditlevsen, it’s not “unlikely” she’d attach to the likelihood, it’s that they lead to disappointment, a sense of uneasy drift through life, a constant feeling of listless depression, which permeates her world and the people in it.

I wouldn’t claim that my last two reads were a barrel of witty laughs, au contraire, HHhH and The Tortoise and the Hare, were serious, difficult considerations of history and married life, of the public and the domestic. BUT they were elevated by style, by the wit and depth of Binet’s voice, by the elegance of Jenkins’s prose. Ditlevsen, translated at least, lacked both.

The stories fell flat, as flat as her characters were and I couldn’t seem to penetrate any sense of their tragedy, only an immense sadness. There were moments of whimsical ennui, especially in the first story, “The Umbrella,” about a woman who makes a fairly typically bad marriage, yearning for a silk umbrella. I thought those were Ditlevsen’s strongest stories, the ones focussed on an object, which takes on significance beyond its mundane “commonplaceness,” an umbrella, a housecat, a knife, for a character. Concentrated on this object is a world of emotion, complex and nuanced, which defines something in the character they cannot define themselves: a yearning, an anger, a need for control, respectively. Overall, however, the narrator’s flat delivery, about flat characters living in a flat world were not for me. I recognize Ditlevsen’s “genius” in evoking ordinary unhappiness, but I was happy to leave her world behind. I have her Copenhagen trilogy in the summer TBR and hope it’ll prove to be a better reading experience.

The Trouble With Happiness by Tove Ditlevsen is a good short story collection! I listened to the audiobook and the narrator Stine Wintlev was excellent. Since maybe of the stories featured female main characters Stine’s narration felt very authentic. I liked how several of the stories had similar themes of marriage, working class and the disparity between women and men. I wish NetGalley would include the chapter titles in their audiobook app. My fave story was Umbrella. I wonder about the deeper meaning to that story. I really enjoyed reading this translated book and I loved that this was my first short story audiobook!
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Thank you to Macmillan Audio via NetGalley for my ALC!

Tove Ditlevsen's The Trouble with Happiness depicts a group of everyday people who find it difficult to express themselves in the midst of emotional events such as marriage, divorce, and domesticity. "The Method," a narrative that begins, "Being married to an entire person was too much," captured my attention since our narrator recounts how she has learned to regulate their relationship. I like this novel so much that I read it three times in a row. When I read "A Fine Business," my heart sank with pity for a single mother who, desperate for money, contemplates a shockingly low offer for her property. Some of the strongest stories in this collection, however, are those that examine a child's point of view. In "A Nice Boy," the adoptive son of a newlywed couple confronts his guilty conscience, which develops within him "like a heavy, thick material." His parents aren't cruel, but the idea that "he owed a duty to these folks" who had taken him in weighs heavily on him. This anthology is straightforward, delicate, and very human. I discovered solace and information about how other people live. The Trouble with Happiness is a very sobering book full of reminders that there are no answers to life's puzzles. Tove Ditlevsen was a true master of the short story.

I thought this collection of short stories about the troubles of domestic life in Copenhagen was entertaining. It was a quick read and I enjoyed that each of these stories left you feeling a little bit disturbed.

dnf :/ just was not holding my attention at 40%!! I'm not sure it's the books fault, I just have not been super interested in short stories lately, so it's partially my fault!!!

The Trouble with Happiness is a collection of short stories about troubled domestic lives in Copenhagen.

Most of these stories were about women in unhappy marriages who just wanted more for themselves. Unfortunately, the men they were with either couldn't or wouldn't be that for them. These stories were kind of horrifying in that so many people marry or spend their lives with the wrong people. So many are miserable and know that a better or happier life is possible, but being unable or unwilling to find it.

Some parts were a little dull or slow, but the writing was beautiful. Thank you NetGalley!

Thank you NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
I enjoyed these unsettling, short, domestic dramas. These did a good job of leaving you feeling unsettled and waiting with bated breath to see what happens next.

The Trouble With Happiness is a wholesome yet sad collection of short stories. The author puts so many real life feelings into beautiful short stories. This book made me feel for the characters, especially for the females throughout.
Taking simple things like a cat and making it tragic for the wanting of a lost child. Or a simple object like an umbrella and tying it into the waning and despise of a wholesome marriage.
This book made me want more and I plan on reading all past and future publications from this author.

I've been hearing a lot about Tove Ditlevsen since the English-speaking world sort of rediscovered her with the translation and publication of her Copenhagen Trilogy a few years ago, so when I saw this I knew I had to request it. The title, taken from one of the short stories included in the book, is very apt; all of these stories dealt with the empty and unsatisfied lives of many women, especially in the domestic sphere. You see women fighting to escape their situations, women who are trapped, women who feel that their lives could have been so much more—it's a very quietly sad book.

A lot of the stories are quite short, and although that may lead some people to feel less connected to each narrative, for me those small glimpses of these women and their struggles with happiness made them stick with me so much more. Ditlevsen just has a beautiful way with words and makes these stories, small in scope, feel so large and important. This just made me more excited to read her Copenhagen Trilogy as I've seen her prowess and how beautiful her writing is.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

An advanced copy of this audiobook was provided with courtesy of Tove Ditlevsen, NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for review purposes. Thank you so much.

This book is a short-story collection written in 1950s and 60s by a Danish author and poet Tove Ditlevsen. Her memoir, the Copenhagen Trilogy, was translated and published in English in 2021. Copenhagen Trilogy received rave reviews yet I didn't finish it due to dreary and lengthy contents. I was excited to give this author another try.

Unlike The Copenhagen Trilogy, this is a short story collection with each story involving marital tensions. Ditlevsen herself has been married four times and must have been familiar with social conventions and idiosyncrasies of familial relationships. While the stories are written decades ago, we could still relate to some of these issues. While there are no violence involved, stories are tense - like watching a small eggshell crack spreading in boiling water. They are well written and well narrated in this audiobook. I would recommend this book to fans of Sylvia Plath, and personally enjoyed short story format over her memoir better.

So very dreary and sad. The moroseness and casual cruelty of domesticity present in every story was just a bit too much for my taste.

The narration was very good and I think paired well with the book perfectly.

I don’t think I was the demographic for this book. This book is mainly about domestic situation of a nuclear family and how the mother and wife deals with her relationships.

I am a single 26-year-old woman 😅

With that being said the writing was lovely and I could see how someone that has children or a husband could gain something from this book but in my situation I didn’t relate to it as well.