Thorstein Thomsen works in all genres for children and young
people and he writes seriously, humorously and poetically about their lives –
and he writes from the child’s perspective, so that a block of flats in the
suburb of Lyngby becomes a whole world.
Born in Lyngby in 1950 and brought up by a single mother, Thorstein Thomsen had early experience of what has led to his
wide literary production. Themes from Thorstein’s own childhood recur in his
books and the pith and insight of his gallery of characters does not come from
out of the blue – his kind of perception is only achieved via personal experience.
He writes about the boys in the backyard, about the poor people in the blocks
of flats in contrast to the wealthy people in the residential neighbourhoods
and he writes about the boys’ friendships across social boundaries. A vigorous
sense of fellowship with the frail and the outsiders permeates his stories and
runs through his entire body of work – and it is all presented with a twinkle
of the eye and a humour and imagination that makes for magic in the stories.
The boys are the mainstays in Thorstein
Thomsen’s stories and they are all boys with imagination, drive and a
delightfully anarchist philosophy. This is true of Torben in the Torben-series
and Frede in the Frede-series, but the other central characters - Rud from the
Tordenskjold Club and Karl from the Momberg-series – are also spirited with a
vengeance. The boys are all cut from the same cloth; they are just at different
stages in their development from child to adult. But common to them all is a
heart of gold and a staggering ability to get themselves into the craziest
predicaments and to come through in one piece. Tracking all the boys in
Thorstein Thomsen’s stories is like following one boy’s development as he
becomes older and finally adult – and that boy is probably Thorstein Thomsen himself.
Belief in one another and the goodness in the world; love as the essential underlying
force that keeps our heads above water and which allows for foolishness,
experiment and irrationality. The characters in Thorstein Thomsen’s novels
command our respect – the boys who never lose heart, but perhaps especially
their parents who, despite every kind of adversity and problem, never give
their children cause to doubt their love. Solidarity with the children is
strong and the belief that children can work the world out on their own if they
are given the freedom to do so, makes the books well-worth reading for both
children and their parents.
Thorstein Thomsen’s work is, as can be
seen, broad in scope and multi-facetted – even without mentioning his picture
books, his rhymes and jingles or his musical talent. These sides of a major
Danish children’s writer would fill many more paragraphs.
(2001)
