When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back Carl’s Book

“In March 2015, Naja Marie Aidt’s son Carl died at twenty-five years old in a tragic accident. When Death Takes Something from You, Give It Back describes the first year after that devastating phone call, until the shock slowly wears off. It is at once a sober account of life after losing a child–showing how grief transforms your relationship to reality, your loved ones, and time–and a book about the language of poetry, loss, and love. How do you approach the impossible to write about your deceased child? The book’s complex form enacts the rupture and process of assembling the pieces. There are short prose sections addressed to Carl and intense lyric passages. There are fragments from the present that merge with flashbacks and journal entries from the past. Quotes appear throughout from an array of literary voices, woven together with Naja Marie Aidt’s own voice. This multifarious book defies genre or any singular description”–