Karl Ove Knausgård

This is my 8th Knausgaard tome, and I've commented on previous reviews that somehow his writing bewitches me to the extent that he can make loading a dishwasher spellbinding (which is helpful, as often his writing contains plenty of domestic chores). However, like all good crushes, there comes a point when the shine wears off, when the things that originally made you see stars become the very points that start to grate on you. I fear I've reached that point with Knausgaard.

I don't know what changed for me with this novel compared to his previous, but the fairy dust was missing. Rather than my literary crush looking a bit less handsome close up, I hope it's simply that he missed the mark a bit with this one. Knausgaard's 'My Struggle' series focused on his and his family's day-to-day lives, but there was sparkle about him, a toe-curling honesty that was a bit like how reality TV draws you in despite your best intentions.

The first half of this book focuses on the character Syvert mostly, who has returned to his family home in Norway aimless and jobless after completing his military service. He (eventually) stumbles upon a secret his late father had been hiding, but you've got to grind through 200 pages of utter dullness which borders on depressiveness to get there. Once I was eventually on the hook, after another 200 pages the story changes to Russia and a completely new set of characters, and it was like starting all over again, taking another 200 pages to get into that. Eventually the two would become connected, but I think this would have worked better in an alternating chapter format as it was like starting a new book halfway in. The Russian section had long story digressions bearing little importance to how the stories would connect, with pages upon pages devoted to the character's musings about potential theses for her PhD. Not being remotely scientifically wired, I glazed over heavily after a while of this.

In true Knausgaard style, before the two key character's stories finally intertwine there's a random segue into an excerpt from a minor character's book called 'The Wolves of Eternity' which examines principally the theories of Russian librarian Fyodorovich Fyodorov, who believed in the complete resurrection of the dead - not to an eternal life in heaven but with the dead resuming their previous lives eternally on earth. Reading this, I felt how I did when he went into his massive tangent in Book 6 of My Struggle on Hitler - irritated on the one hand, but yet begrudgingly interested in the topic and admiring of his philosophising (despite it feeling rather tinged with a little self-importance - I have these ideas I want you to know I have, despite how tenuous the link to what you're currently reading).

When finally the two main characters lives intertwine (with a 20 plus year gap from where Syvert's previous story had finished up), it was fairly underwhelming, but by that stage I just wanted to get finished anyway. Often I've breezed through Knausgaard's doorstoppers not wanting them to end, but I felt I worked hard with my attention and interest for a lot of this beast of almost 800 pages.

3 stars - still musing on whether it's me or him. Perhaps I've just grown out of my crush. But here I am still thinking about the book a little. Damn that man...… (plus d'informations)