Extraordinary. It is about death but I can think of few books which have such life. It shows
us what love is.' Max Porter author of Grief is the Thing With Feathers and Lanny 'There is
no one quite like Naja Marie Aidt' Valeria Luiselli 'Devastating angry challenging
fragmented and filled with the beautiful hope that the love we have for people continues into
the world even after they're gone.' Culturefly 'Fragmented poetic informative and truthful
Aidt faces the greatest loss we can ever know with all the force of great elegy writers like
Anne Carson and Denise Riley. Essential.' Polly Clark author of Larchfield and Tiger _______
"I raise my glass to my eldest son. His pregnant wife and daughter are sleeping above us.
Outside the March evening is cold and clear. 'To life!' I say as the glasses clink with a
delicate and pleasing sound. My mother says something to the dog. Then the phone rings. We
don't answer it. Who could be calling so late on a Saturday evening?" In March 2015 Naja
Marie Aidt's 25-year-old son Carl died in a tragic accident. When Death Takes Something
From You Give It Back is about losing a child. It is about formulating a vocabulary to express
the deepest kind of pain. And it's about finding a way to write about a reality invaded by
grief lessened by loss. Faced with the sudden emptiness of language Naja finds solace in
the anguish of Joan Didion Nick Cave C.S. Lewis Mallarmé Plato and other writers who have
suffered the deadening impact of loss. Their torment suffuses with her own as Naja wrestles
with words and contests their capacity to speak for the depths of her sorrow. This
palimpsest of mourning enables Naja to turn over the pathetic precious transience of existence
and articulates her greatest fear: to forget. The insistent compulsion to reconstruct the
harrowing aftermath of Carl's death keeps him painfully present while fragmented memories
journal entries and poetry inch her closer to piecing Carl's life together. Intensely moving
and quietly devastating this is what is it to be a family what it is to love and lose and
what it is to treasure life in spite of death's indomitable resolve.
