A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1

A plane-crash in the alps leaves one hundred and fifty bodies. One hundred and fifty deaths in one hundred and fifty families, and they'll all struggle to carry on —— Me, my friend and his girlfriend on a camping trip leads us to France, not too far from the crash site, in or 3. The camper is huge, painted in pink with green stripes. An eye-catcher if there ever was one. Three months later she's dead. The images of the dead and dying still in her mind she returns home to find her husband hanging from the ceiling.

Seems like every time you turn around there's another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear and there's really nothin' anyone can say. Words by Bob Dylan, I know by heart, kept me company my whole life. Maybe I'll rearrange the shelves on Goodreads, give them all names of Dylan songs. How long lasts dying anyway? The media keeps saying the passengers on the flight died in an instant.

Must have felt like a lifetime for them. In the end it's only a thin line, crossed in a millisecond. The journey there takes a whole life. It's all downhill from birth. Closing the book on its final page, like emerging from someone else's thoughts. How accurate are the narrator's memories? How much got lost on the way from his mind to mine?

Written down, edited, re-written, translated, read. How accurate are mine? He did try to tell it on more than one occasion. When he's cleaning a room, or preparing a meal, seemingly nothing is left out. Some call it boring. I call it thoroughness being a Teuton an all. But there are always some tiny details, some things that got stored in memory, but can't be recalled. Nothing but the truth. How reliable is this narrator anyway? No way to confirm those memories, those sneaky bastards.

Things got scrambled, distorted, resorted. And then there is artistic license. I grant him that. But all of this doesn't really matter for the book to be liked by me. One down, five to go. Oder ist das sogar Kunst? Und die Leserschaft scheint dies zu lieben.

Ich kann hier jede Bewertung zwischen 2 bis 5 Sterne nachvollziehen. Ich war gerade im 1. View all 17 comments. Jun 13, Malia rated it liked it Shelves: Original review seems to have vanished As the title might suggest, this is not a comedy, so if you are struggling through a gray, bleak winter, stay well away! Knausgaard is kind of like sharp cheese. At first you think you hate it, but then it's actually not bad at all. The first half of the book, he came across as Original review seems to have vanished The first half of the book, he came across as arrogant and, keeping in mind that a man who isn't even fifty is writing six books about himself, very self-indulgent.

Nonetheless, even mildly irritated as I was, I had to admit that there was something about his style that made this book compulsively readable.

About two thirds of the way through, something happens, "the big event" in Knausgaard's life and his voice softens. His mind turns to others and his vulnerability even as a grown, relatively successful man is exposed. It is this last third that makes me want to keep going with Knausgaard's books, though their length and number is a little daunting.

Sometimes his recording of all the minutiae of his daily life and the airing of all his frustrations is a little annoying, and the setting reads like a gray-washed Scandinavian crime drama, but I suppose this is his attempt to provide an honest and transparent account of his inner and outer world. Undeniably he is a good writer, and his observations, though sometimes tediously conveyed, are often astute gems of human insight, which elevate this book from an autobiography, to a text that possesses philosophical musings and reads like a well-polished novel.

Something that initially irritated me was the title, "My Struggle" is, of course, "Mein Kampf" in German. Being German, I couldn't understand why anyone would chose to give their book such a name, but reading My Struggle, it becomes clear that he in no way associates his very personal story with Hitler's disgusting book. When you read Knausgaard's story, the title does seem very apt, because he really highlights and dissects all the areas in his life that are rife with struggles. Find more reviews and bookish fun at http: View all 9 comments. I wanted to see if that tongue-in-cheek droll self-awareness was his constant subject.

As it turns out, his six-volume memoir cum fiction is much more than that. It has a vibrancy, truth-telling honesty, and relevance far beyond anything I expected. And the writing…well, the writing was involving and exacting…and addictive. My Struggle Volume I begins with a discussion about death and how the dead have been removed from our purview, we lucky ones in the Western world who do not experience street conflict.

This is precisely the thing I have been mulling over lately, so he drew me in with his talk of death rather than put me off. He returns to that humiliation again and again as he grows older, for the sense of having seen something and the shame of having been laughed at never leave him. There is a circular momentum to his narrative a circling-the-drain quality, all facetiousness aside , for he returns to the death of his father in the second half of Volume One.

But first we learn his age 39 years , and learn of his marriage, his children, his attempt to create something important, circling back to begin at the beginning, his birth and childhood. Knausgaard as a teen is not to be missed. When viewing his father's corpse he writes: What a remarkable thing to say.

Translated from the original Norwegian by Don Bartlett

But, he goes on to say, "I was no longer looking at a person but something that resembled a person. The interminable house cleaning and grass mowing…we feel those details in our exhaustion, repugnance, and need to escape. The accretion of detail, the structure, the language…all of it add up to something impossible to put down and impossible to forget.

He claimed to hate his father, but he loved him, too, and was more like him in his reserve than he dares mention. But we see it. You just take one more step back into yourself. There is something much more deep and profound to a relationship than that. He seeks to make an experience, rather than just describe one. Past the delicatessen I stopped at the shop window surrounded by the mob. Shouldering and pushing I made my way near the front. Standing near someone wearing too much perfume and someone not enough I located myself close by to see the desk, red writing blotter, the mirror attached across from him and the stack of books on the far side by the crook of his elbow.

A store employee arrived with a clean glass ashtray. A cigarette dangled from the writers stained lips, yellowed teeth. Fingertips also Past the delicatessen I stopped at the shop window surrounded by the mob. Fingertips also yellowed squashed the newly lit cigarette into the ashtray smoldering out any lapsed embers or future glinted glow. Handsome, he ran his hands through sandy thick hair, twice.

As before, then before that he crumpled the page and tossed it into the waiting garbage can. The crowd groaned physically, vocally. Gathered together in growing number they waited for hours, some arriving the evening before, to watch the writer write, watch him finish with an expected flourish the final line of the next to last edition of his multi-book project about his life. Though many expert opinions offered no one said with certainty whether this stack and its slight wobble might be autobiography or fiction.

They watched the awkward snatches of blue pen skitter across the the page laid before him. He lit another cigarette. It clouded the mirror and his reflection. He tried not to glance at the faces lunging above shoulders on the other side of the plate glass. The crowd did not yell out on the minutia of his life as his insecurities did. Sometimes they hollered what they wanted him to write, what they wanted to hear, or see on the page. Hand to forehead he twisted as their words became inseparable from his own.

Crumbled papers and a splitting headache he asked for a drink. The limit not yet reached he sipped then took a deep gulp. But there it was. He reached out a hand and grasped it. Holding it gently to not injure a wing with his other hand he scribbled quick. Half standing he dotted it. Sitting he snapped the brown binder in place and pushed it beneath the stack of books on his left.

The crowd broke out in growing applause. Only then they spotted the bleed, its slow drip and shuddered hiss. Standing, he lit another cigarette and left. Just what I needed. One more lapsed memoir about someone who believes their walk around their block is filled with immense meaning. This ongoing shift leading to the streak of memoirs clogging the book market sending out the message, if you want to be published this is the way to go, and if you want to be somebody this is what to read. The saddest outcome is mistaking narcissism for originality.

Three thousand six hundred pages. Seven volumes describing details of daily ordinary life. A punishment I didn't believe I deserved despite the rave reviews and awards, sales internationally going wild, interviews in what seemed like on a weekly if not daily basis. Could my cynicism overcome such overwhelming proof of an achievement in literature? Of course it could. Years of practice has made me a polished cynic. Yet, I argued with myself, at least give it, him, a chance. Write about the experience. I think most of us on GR have been through something like this and it would be a good thing to discuss.

Bookworm seemed the natural place to begin and with Michael Silverblatt interviewing skills probably end. Silverblatt has been a Reader since the age of five and has continued, due to a sincere interest since. He not only reads the book he will be talking with the author about, all of the author's other work but also, the works of the author's main influences. He knows the author's work possibly better than the author.

The real reward of his show is that he speaks with the author, asks questions, as a Reader not a critic. Asking all the questions I would ask he goes further asking questions I did not think of but was very glad I got to listen to. The man interviewed spoke in a hesitant, shy, deprecating way. He was clearly sincere in a manner where it would not be possible for him to be otherwise. Despite this being probably around his eight hundred and fifty fourth interview he weighed each question with a deep thoughtfulness caring about the accuracy of his simple, clear words.

As much as I searched, damn it, I was not able to find a shred of self promotion. What a disappointment this guy was.

1. A Death in the Family.
2. The Nominees;
3. .
4. Lesson Plans Come Back, Little Sheba;
5. more on this story.
6. Die geschmäcker siziliens - Fisch und Fleish (German Edition)?

So, I opened My Struggle 1 and began reading. Starting on the first page of over five hundred pages he sounded just as he did during the interview. He wrote as himself. The trick is the ease of the words, airy as thoughts, surfaced currents impregnated not with beauty which might weight it down but with metaphoric precision, meaning, there to be taken or disregarded.

The purity of the flow asks no demands. The entryway in is unguarded. No posted signs or uniformed guards. It requires no ID or mention of your name, for you no longer exist. It is a talisman for the opening unto oneself, feelings left un-dusted in a heap lapsed into the darkness of an unvisited corner. The reader is invited to join him with their own struggles and daunting regime hidden beneath their life regimen. The ease-in occurs before awareness.

One is already there. The force of the opening of his consciousness results in the opening of ones own. The simplicity, sincerity of reporting is an invitation. My Struggle is an evocative strain of fiction alchemised in a unique brew with autobiography. By mixing these powerful elements Knausgaard has created a riveting world anchored in the specifics of its own telling.

It is a world that indeed attracts due to its simplicity of style yet its underbelly of the universal which all, to differing degrees, can relate too. It is told in the 1st person by a narrator who is apart from all, from himself, vulnerable, and sincerely seeking meaning from the indifference of the ordinary. Deeply aware of his shortcomings they are recorded, voiced in similar details as the rest of his life. Somber in its Nordic outlines of dark skies and landscapes as though drained by Knausgaard's withdrawal, he continuously searched for if there was any meaning to his life or was he a trespasser, uninvited?

This style is not representative of a movement within the current literary world enforced and swayed by cultural phenomena. It is so personal, such an open invitation within one character, one writer's mind that it remains and rightfully so as exclusive of all attempts and posturings of classification, representation, or referencing. As such I do not agree with comparisons to Proust.

Knausgaard's past, though vividly recalled remains an obstacle to overcome, a haunted wall which must be scaled. Again, comparisons only miss the highly charged personal experience of a reading unlike any previous terms of reading. The distance has been removed. There is no sheathe of paper.

What he saw in the past plummeting by no longer had any meaning, drained of all importance, the past receding rather than as a structure of ceding relevant data to be learned from. What if one is born or through cultural forces one is not endeared at all to the acquisition of goods, the accumulation of wealth, the rush for fame and status, Books published, important prizes won? What others are interested in has no value or interest for you?

1. ANCIENT JEWISH PROVERBS;
2. The Midas Touch.
3. Ill See You After Class (A MILF Teacher and Her Young Male Student Almost Get Caught).

Yet, you have a wife and children you love. Their activities pull you into that world and its social intercourse and activities. You're daily life when not writing, and there is less time for that, is like for everyone else filled with the ordinary and uninteresting.

Without meaning what does one do, create myths and form a meaning buried in cliches, stale ends of loaves of bread tossed by political, religious leaders, and reinforced by the resigned backslapping and in-jokes? Knausgaard's answer is to flip the ordinary over, from it birth the meaning that lay hidden there. In his vulnerable, doubting, self-deflecting, voice, each daily event we all know so well, he ties to crack a seam and excavate what meaning he can find.

The purity of his openness, its casual innocence, never calls attention to itself. I cannot do otherwise, He must, through the intricacies of awareness attach himself to objects and landscapes, not only as rhythmic device but to keep self tethered to existence and not float away.

His struggle to stay within the present and not allow the past which is threatened by father's death and grandmother's condition, the condition of the house, the cutting of the overgrown garden and lawn. He is going through what most of us are going or have gone through. Yet, few of us would speak its name or report its intricacies of destruction, despair. He must be with others or an other but do to no fault of his own is not a candidate. Attempts lead only to further despair and an inner drive to disown who he is inside which constitutes his alienation preventing any true connection.

He can douse the inner searing with ritual dosings of alcohol and fraternization, avoiding the costs of being left alone with his lengthening existential fears. His struggles begin with no reflection of himself back from his disinterested parents, leaving no sense of self but shame. His parents separation, divorce becomes a tragedy as does his father's changes and mother's prolonged absences. As with any child who encounters life's blasphemies at an age before being equipped to face or handle them Knausgaard begins to see the fragility of life, draws the origins and destinations of the messages life sends forth.

Seeing through pretensions, while what all other children want to do is play, he is cornered with thoughts piling in his mind, trying to abstract meaning from all he sees and hears. Alienating him from others he clings to his older brother. His response to being so different from others who have been given the freedom to play, to grow up, graduate from school, marry and have a normal family life following happily the rituals and conventions of their culture.

He would like to believe that the objects and events of life are real in and of themselves-the receiver having little to do with their existence, opposite from his older brother. Most of what he says can be in some way interpreted, seen as metaphoric or simply as events which have taken place. What he mines for is meaning. His gear is sparse compacted sentences. The ceaseless, breathless tension will not stop. The identification with the narrator is ongoing, his searchings, strivings. The narrative is and will be endless. And that is fine. I have a complete faith that when I reach the last few final pages of this edition others will appear in their order to replace them.

You say six more? This so far is a world calling and easily slipped into. Like the Seinfeld television show, a show about nothing, this book seems like reading about nothing.

Min kamp 1

It does not ask for intermissions to halt and interpret layers of beautific metaphor or poetic prose rising to ethereal level, yet it is quite clear he knows how to write and write well. It is only after, that ideas and images haunt. We are watching ourselves, the self we don't quite know or dare to be, the non-hero rejecting the hypocrisy of his culture while trying to survive within it.

Young Karl-Ove already walking through his town's life ravaged by a grave scarred mark. He has no idea of how it came there but desperately wants it hidden from others. If only…If only he could be like them. If only reason and thought can provide at least clues to where meaning lurks and not an endless circle providing us with witless illusions of a form of progress. He is on a quest and I am rooting for him. It is not a simple quest tale. It is the all encompassing quest, yet so simply told. It is parceled out in such a way we can all read it and so many do.

Over five hundred pages and not quite enough. I thank GR Friend Lee for his kind persistence in giving this book its due value, persisting in his recommendation that I read it despite my hesitancy and reservations. I am not equipped to rate this book since there are no others written in its vein. All I can do is rate my enjoyment which is a 4. Within a week of each other my mother and a grad school friend recommended this to me, both calling it "up my alley," maybe because it's a literary autobiography unafraid of piling on detail and ripping off pages of dense, insightful exposition.

I hadn't seen the James Wood review in The New Yorker didn't skim it until after I wrote a draft of this review , but I've long been a lover of the look and feel of Archipelago's books and I'm an Anselm Keifer fan there's a Keifer on the cover. Fictio Within a week of each other my mother and a grad school friend recommended this to me, both calling it "up my alley," maybe because it's a literary autobiography unafraid of piling on detail and ripping off pages of dense, insightful exposition.

Fiction is fact selected, arranged, and charged with purpose, said Thomas Wolfe, but Knausgaard's acknowledged precedent is Proust. Narrator admits to gulping Proust down before writing this novel, memoir, "roman," something that maintains the circuituous structure but swaps out the velveteen serpentine suffusions for something cleaner, starker, heteronormative, and involuntarily cathartic more than ecstatic -- none of which mean it's better than Proust, just comparing the two because Proust is the archetype, the way some bands derive from The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zep, and others from Kraftwerk.

A pretty clear division between scene and summary exposition: The exposition I loved whereas the scenes, especially in the first part, I only admired -- or maybe I overrelated to the first section involving his adolescence? Teenage dudes driving around looking to drink, playing guitar I loved how my electric guitar case smelled , crappy bands playing outside to no one my college band once played outside to four of our friends , lusting, making out, varieties of -- to my mind -- overly common experience that may account for why I've never really written about my teen years, have always pushahed them, deemed them necessarily stoned more than beautiful, and therefore unworthy.

That depth, that distance, seems necessary in part to evade accusations of YA-ness from fuckheads like me. Something else I loved: Here, such naturalism is less abject than the object , its point, a cataloguing of momentary forms, like monumental skyscapes at sunset, momentary, meaningless, lacking secret codes to crack, glanced at, deemed beautiful, that's it -- appreciated but so common they're taken for granted.

The gutter and the rainwater still running down it into the grass. I could not grasp that he wouldn't see any more of this, however hard I tried. Things are clear and rational and yet move unpredictably -- nonlinear layering of the story gives it more depth. It feels absolutely real and reading it enhanced perception of life around at least one reader.

Also, when they inevitably round up the post-irony novels that have come since DFW's prediction in the famous TV essay about Leyner, Knausgaard will be mentioned. He's sincere without being stupid about it, without feeling like he's restraining a natural instinct to entertain or humor. Loved the bit, after he talks with his wife on the phone and they both say how much they miss and love each other, how he gets some things at a convenience store and wants to sleep with the chubby Iraqi or Iranian girl who won't look up at him.

It's very well-done, understated, its significance not overexplicated with exposition, plus it suggests issues that might arise in later volumes. Throughout, its naturalism feels natural, like literature more than contemporary literary fiction that adheres to the rules of its genre and thereby so often for me feels unreal, like a story, like fiction. I'm sure this will stick with me.

One thing of note: The author's struggle is artistic, emotional, personal if not solitary ie, familial , literally and figuratively cleaning the mess others have made in life, dealing with the memory of his father now that the narrator himself is a father of three. Not a depressing book since it's filled with life, even if it's mostly about death.

Minimal talk of fjords , too, although the word definitely appears. View all 4 comments. Posted at Heradas Review Memoirs are fascinating to me, because we know how truly fallible memory is. It is demonstrably unreliable. I think that David Shields said it best in his book Reality Hunger: Memoirs belong to the category of literature, not journalism. What the memoirist owes the reader is the ability to persuade him or her that the narrator is trying, as honestly as possible, to get to the bottom of the experience at hand.

That is why writers with a strong style often write bad books. It is this breaking down that is called 'writing. And it is really, really good stuff. It took about pages until the prose clicked for me, and then it became difficult to put down. I found myself coming back to it again and again, "Oh, I'll just read another page or two while I'm waiting for such-and-such. He'll write toward an event, we know what the event is, we know that it's important. And then the Karl Ove 'character' in the story will think back to something, and we're instantly back with him, experiencing a different event.

We eventually forget that we're in the past-past, and that's right when he goes back to just before that event that's coming up. The story progresses with some forward trajectory, but skips right over the event, to 20 years later, and he describes the room in which he's sitting writing his second novel. The story itself is simple, brutally honest, and relatable. It's also very foreign for me, having known very little about life in Norway until this small glimpse has expanded my knowledge slightly.

It's the first thing I've read that I would count as both literature, and a comfortable, easy read. View all 13 comments.

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• Min kamp 1 (Min kamp #1) by Karl Ove Knausgård;

A fact which raises a certain little question: He would captivate you even if he wrote about washing the dishes or picking the right fish at the market, which he does extensively as a matter of fact. That, however, doesn't quite answer the above question.

A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard – review

What does answer it is the fact that A Death in the Family is utterly and painfully real. He looks the reader straight in the eyes and speaks a truth that hurts. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read.

A Death in the Family (My Struggle Book 1) by Karl Ove Knausgård (1 star ratings)

Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. In this utterly remarkable novel Karl Ove Knausgaard writes with painful honesty about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father, and his bewilderment and grief on his father's death. When Karl Ove becomes a father himself, he must balance the deman In this utterly remarkable novel Karl Ove Knausgaard writes with painful honesty about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father, and his bewilderment and grief on his father's death.

When Karl Ove becomes a father himself, he must balance the demands of caring for a young family with his determination to write great literature. In A Death in the Family Knausgaard has created a universal story of the struggles, great and small, that we all face in our lives. A profoundly serious, gripping and hugely readable work written as if the author's very life were at stake.

Paperback , pages. Published March 7th by Vintage first published To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about A Death in the Family , please sign up. I find it shocking that more people haven't commented on the title. I have searched through articles, and while they mention the obvious connection to Hitler, none of them ask about it in detail.

WHY would he call it that, and what point is he trying to make? I can't bring myself to read the book, brilliant though it may be, because the title is too horrifying for me to move past. Afonso It is unfair of you to consider not to read the book due to it's title. It has nothing to do with anti-semism, it simply refers to Karl's own personal …more It is unfair of you to consider not to read the book due to it's title.

It has nothing to do with anti-semism, it simply refers to Karl's own personal fight, hence "min kamp". While I do agree that the choice of title seems to be a way to deliver some degree of shock, I don't believe you can make a complete and instant association with "Mein Kampf", let alone allow a biased, unfundamented opinion based on your ideals of political correctness keep you from reading the book or any other book for that matter.

Has anyone out there read the whole series? I just finished Book 1 and found it a little naval-gazing, too self-absorbed. Does it get any better? Jay "Jakie" Mary Ellen! I would not consider myself an literati by any means, but I do love to read and I cannot understand …more Mary Ellen! I would not consider myself an literati by any means, but I do love to read and I cannot understand why the literary community is making such a fuss over this author. I have just finished Book 1 and despite my disappointment with it will read Book 2.

Recognizing a good "read" and great literature are, of course, two different thought processes. Knausgaard is no Proust for sure and any resemblance is only in the quantity of texts. I found moments of brilliance and insight, but long passages of absolutely boring, tedious narrative. For a young man given so much independence in his life, Karl Ove seems very, very naive and lacking in self-confidence. I would like to hear from others reading this author's work to instruct me as to what I may be missing or how to delve deeper into what he may be trying to illustrate with this work.

Maybe a Knausgaard group here in GoodReads? If Book 2 doesn't get any better, I'm tossing it into my pile of overrated contemporary authors. For a very similar autobiographical type narrative, except with excellent, impassioned writing and characters look into Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels.

See all 20 questions about A Death in the Family…. Lists with This Book. Difficult - no, impossible - when beginning a book like this to ignore the adulation the book has received and not accumulate some sense of expectation; to anticipate a worthwhile return for your reading time when the author has been described as the Proust of our age and critics breathlessly annunciate their drug-like dependence on the authors prose and implore us to join them in appreciating "a memoir that burns with the heat of life", one which is "close to a work of genius".

Given all that, Difficult - no, impossible - when beginning a book like this to ignore the adulation the book has received and not accumulate some sense of expectation; to anticipate a worthwhile return for your reading time when the author has been described as the Proust of our age and critics breathlessly annunciate their drug-like dependence on the authors prose and implore us to join them in appreciating "a memoir that burns with the heat of life", one which is "close to a work of genius".

Given all that, you could be forgiven for expecting that the book would, at the most basic and undemanding level, be a good read. It doesn't take terribly long for doubts to filter into the mind, especially when one begins to notice an element of the narrative which will appear in various forms throughout the book: All of this would be more bearable if Knausgaard possessed any exceptional skill as a writer or a talent for original insights. Some element of style might transform the tedium into compelling prose.

Instead we are stuck with writing that is in, one presumes, a faithful translation at best competent, or one might say, writing that matches the level of ennui that most of the subject-matter induces. Only when the narrator's father dies does the book become briefly interesting I almost said it comes to life. We are given descriptions of the circumstances in which the man and his mother lived which have a fascination that is at once repulsive and absorbing.

But even here the effect is diminished by needless rambling, unimaginative descriptions and -something which is a feature of the entire book - a complete lack of humour. For when is humour more needed that at a time if death? I have no idea why this book has been so adored and praised by critics and readers.

But then I feel the same way about the film 'Boyhood' which was lauded and won prizes, but which I thought was lacking in any visual flair and whose clever construction masked a basic lack of soul or nerve. It bears a lot of similarities with the Knausgaard book, if not in specifics then certainly in the way that both are praised for their honest representation of truth.

But the representation of truth does not necessarily exist in describing, or showing, someone walking along a street, with due attention to their clothes and the buildings and sky behind them. To understand the quiddity of that reality we need to have the experience reimagined for us so that we can be inside that scene and experience it as a transcendent moment, a moment of "enstrangement".

View all 13 comments. View all 3 comments. I kept repeating that while I read this suffocating book. An unremarkable man writes a detailed and relentless catalogue of his life. But perhaps a mite cynical? I don't think the accumulation of mundane minutiae by a sensitive female writer who is also a parent would garner so much attention. Knausgaard is a modern man. Knausgaard is a father. Knausgaard feels a strong malaise because he is a modern man and father.

Knausgaard is utterly Literary sensation Knausgaard is utterly beguiled by his own ennui. I find wonder in the banal. And I don't need my protagonists to be particularly likeable. Knausgaard's distinctive actuality is the kind of self preoccupation and pretension similar to some unfortunate choices in beaus I left behind in my school days. I get it, guy. You are also an echo chamber and the only thing you speak is me Ik heb niets tegen veel details, maar dan moet het wel mooi geschreven zijn of er moet spanning opgebouwd worden waardoor ik graag verder lees. Ik ben tot halverwege gekomen en heb het daarbij gelaten.

View all 6 comments. Some readers have grasped the conflict over his floundering troubles and seemingly inane scraps of a tussled life. I gave this endeavor my best effort, even bent over backwards to jockey and confront the battle labored brawl within the first release of this sprawling multi volume collection. Felt I was sparring in a fight that could not be persevered, even with utmost effort and grapple.

The a "My Struggle" features KOK wrestling the great stress and strain of a hasseled very much ordinary life. The appeal is beyond my grasp, and I only stumbled and scrambled as if in combat with this much heralded effort. Some will no doubt likewise strive and scuffle to fight the subsequent volumes, but I should not have to try too hard to fight that trouble. Immediately logged onto Amazon to see if others were aghast at how bad this book was I'm the kind of reader that takes a lot of notes when reading a novel and I literally felt compelled precisely never to write anything down from this novel Readers who liked this book would also like "Netherland" by Joseph O'Ne Immediately logged onto Amazon to see if others were aghast at how bad this book was Readers who liked this book would also like "Netherland" by Joseph O'Neil: Jun 12, Laura A.

This novel needs a serious editing. There are so many passages so mundane that you pause, wondering why you're reading this rather than clipping your nails, say, or mowing your own lawn. Is Karl Ove Knausgard really a writer or a celebrity of sorts? You won't notice any difference. Much of the first section of this novel centers on a New Year's eve, with young Knausgaard and a friend trying to get to a party, an opportunity for Knausgaard to describe at length his teenage circumstances and self. Arguably almost entirely uneventful, beyond the trivial -- the difficulties of buying some beer, keeping it hidden, and then retrieving it at the appropriate time which actually turns out to be terribly complicated -- it nevertheless allows Knausgaard to riff at length but also agreeably incidentally on his life and youth.

The second section of the novel centers on his father's death in and the aftermath; there's some tidying of affairs to deal with, but it's the cleaning of the filthy house that is most prominent. And death, of course, brings up with many unresolved emotions and memories. As he explains to someone typically: We're wading through his death.

He died in the chair in the room next door, it's still there. And then there's everything that happened here, I mean, a long time ago, when I was growing up, all that's here too, and it's surfacing. I'm somehow very close to everything. To the person I was when I was younger. To the person Dad was. All the feelings from that time are resurfacing. Nevertheless, it takes him years before he can work through much of this as he eventually does in these pages.

And this volume, the first of six, is also clearly only the beginning of the process. Knausgaard has, in fact, revealed relatively little about himself so far, the books zooming in on only a few periods of time -- his middle teenage years, the time of his father's death, the present. There are intriguing mentions of other times, including a year spent as a teacher, and early admission to a creative writing program in what appears to have been an aborted start to his writing career.

But beyond the present, there is, for example, little mention of his relationships with the two women he married and his teenage fumblings are striking in how they don't get very far: My Struggle is also a writer's book. Yes, music was always important, too, and he went through a band-phase, too -- clearly intentionally comically presented in its abysmal failure -- but it's always writing that draws him in.