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.
