The first stirrings of love are often supposed to become unforgettable memories — the kind that demand perfection, as fiction has taught us to expect. But what if the greatest love of your life turns out to be abuse? Something that steals your time and innocence, and pulls you into a whirlwind of manipulation. It’s a heart-wrenching feeling. In Ulrikka S Gernes’ A Girl Left the Room (translated by Caroline Waight, published by Pushkin Press), Tanja is a bright, curious girl who moves through life driven by love for the smallest things, and by empathy. She develops a pen-friendship and a relationship with Eg, a friend of her parents, and a writer. What follows is her discovery of the man he really is and, later, of herself.
It felt fitting, then, to read this novel built from letters passed between a girl and the man who groomed her and to write about it the same way, as correspondence.
Letter to Tanja Dear Tanja, there were moments when I dreaded reading through your experiences. I travelled alongside you, but with a protective, sisterly — almost maternal — instinct. It was only after you recognised the abuse for what it was that I could finally step into your shoes, that I could let myself be you. Mostly because I have been you, in many parts of my own small life, and I carry tremendous anger toward my abusers, and equal parts of vindictiveness toward those who enabled them. I kept hoping, praying, that you would be protected. The romanticised moments, especially the forced sexual encounters, made me weep like a child. I had to shut the book, and keep it aside for a while. But I desperately needed to know if you would escape and find support. I am glad that you did!
Letter to Ulrikka I also wanted to complete a part of my story that remained half-eaten by the surrender to the silence that comes after abuse. What people don’t understand is that grooming and abuse are often a loop, and it takes all the riches in the world to cultivate a ground of emotional support and mental strength. Dear Ulrikka, through your words, you have painfully taken the load for all of us. And we shall be eternally grateful for that. The prickling pain that I felt while reading the book has now healed and metamorphosed into teardrops, and a huge weight is lifted from my chest. I am glad the world is so large and yet so small; we found your words.
Excerpts from an interview with Ulrikka:
What was it like to stay with these themes while writing and how did you take care of yourself?
It was imperative for me to transform Tanja’s story of innocence, abuse, and survival into a work of art, a novel. I took great care with this. Otherwise, why bother? Every night, large birds of prey tore the flesh off my back, and I would have to spend most of the day dressing the wounds. Not until late in the afternoon would I again be able to write. That was how it felt. Like if the ghost of Tanja’s perpetrator would do his utmost to stop the progress. Writing the novel was a battle, but it was also a relief. To express, to find a form for the stuff rummaging inside is always a relief. Even when it didn’t work, and I had to rewrite passages over and over, it felt like conquering back Tanja’s dignity, her sense of self and being in the world; her repair. Did I take care of myself? Not really. I couldn’t, though I do believe that putting the words on the page was a kind of self-care. Sometimes that is how it is: you take care of yourself the hard way.
What drew you to tell this story?
It took me nearly forty years to gather the courage and authority to tell this story. I reached a point where I realised that it would be as hard to write the novel as it would be not to. The many stories and voices that came out of the #MeToo movement helped. While I was working on the novel, French author Vanessa Springora published her novel Consent, which deals with a similar situation. That gave courage. By telling difficult stories, we give each other strength and courage. Annie Ernaux and Marguerite Duras, too, armed me; Nabokov’s Lolita, Stephen Mills’ Chosen, a memoir of stolen boyhood, and many other books. Also, paradoxically, favourable circumstances occurred: the approaching danger in 2020 — the pandemic. Covid took most other obligations away from me, and I found myself isolated at home.
The novel moves between time periods and keeps returning to the past. How did you think about memory while writing? Where does literature come from?
I’d say: life; not one-to-one, but as a condensation, a reduction, and a fair amount of construction. Sadly, the story that is the basis of my novel is by no means original as many women (and men) share similar experiences. It is no secret that I, in A Girl Left the Room, draw on some of my own personal experiences. To find descriptive and telling details from the different time periods I tried to trigger my memory and recollection, for instance, by listening to music from the specific period, or to find out what people were wearing then; advertisements, popular culture, the scents that were in vogue, and so forth. It doesn’t actually take very much to uncover memories, and once I got into his voice, the letters came rather easily, I thought it would be an interesting way for him to present himself in that way, through letters. The magic of literature is that the reader does half the work by filling in the blanks with their own imagination, memories, and lived experiences.
In several places, the body seems to hold what cannot be spoken. How did you approach writing silence and the limits of language?
I don’t really know how I did it. I had many scruples about what I dared to write and how near I dared to go in a scene. Intimacy is a beautiful word that implies mutuality, respect, tenderness, equality; and there’s none of that present, only Tanja is too inexperienced to see that. When it seemed impossible to write a scene, I would tell myself: Just say it. Say what cannot be said. Undress the shame. I wanted my words to be a flashlight shining into the darkest corners to reveal what is hiding there.
How conscious were you of showing the language adults use to protect abusers, sometimes without meaning to [it angers me as a reader that the adults around her didn’t help her]?
It is quite striking how language itself is so willing to not say things in order to avoid the possible conflicts that could arise from criticising a certain behaviour. There’s a word for it: enablers. There are also people who become enablers by seeing things but actively choosing not to do anything about what they see. Tanja is just a girl. And Eg is an important man; he’s an author, an authority, an idol to many and thus untouchable. Yes, it angers me too that no one interfered.
How much of Tanja’s vulnerability to Eg do you see as connected to a home that had already taught her to keep her fear to herself?
Sometimes when I’m doing events with the book, I ask readers when they think the point of no return occurs for Tanja. Only once did a reader say that point of no return had happened before the story even started. I think this reader was right. Something was missing in Tanja’s upbringing that made her vulnerable and an easy target for an irresponsible adult with dark and dubious intentions.
Tanja says she cannot forgive Eg. What would you say to someone living with that kind of anger, especially if they have no one to turn to?
Sometimes I think that all this talk about the importance of forgiveness is overrated. I am sorry, but some things are unforgivable. Period. With no one to turn to — that is a devastating thought! — go tell it to a tree, to a rock, a river; let your voice say it out loud: it does help! Or write it! Despite everything I think, Tanja is strong, full of life, she is not a victim; she certainly doesn’t see herself as a victim.
Ulrikka is a Danish poet and has published many collections of poetry. This is her first translated novel. “It had taken me a very long time to realise that I wouldn’t be able to write this story as poetry, for many reasons it needed to be unfolded in prose. So, I had to be unfaithful to poetry for a while. I could only hope and pray that poetry would take me back after this extensive prose affair,” she writes. We also hope that everything takes her back to her poetry soon. The book is available on Amazon. https://www.amazon.in/Girl-Left-Room-Ulrikka-Gernes/dp/1805333828