Scan barcode
alexrobinsonsupergenius's review against another edition
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
There doesn’t feel like much point to doing a typical review since it’s unlikely someone will have read the previous four volumes but is waiting to hear if Volume 5 is worth it—you’re already either on board or checked out after Volume1.
The good news is that I feel like this is the most engaging so far. It’s mostly chronological, beginning with him at age 19 at a writing academy and culminating in the end of his first marriage.
The main character (the author) continues to be a intriguing/frustrating mix of ego, ambition, intelligence self-awareness and oblivious, and for better or for worse you feel as if you’ve walked a kilometer in his Norwegian shoes.
Next up we have the finale of Vol. 6–which is three times longer than Vol. 5! A happy ending seems unlikely.
The good news is that I feel like this is the most engaging so far. It’s mostly chronological, beginning with him at age 19 at a writing academy and culminating in the end of his first marriage.
The main character (the author) continues to be a intriguing/frustrating mix of ego, ambition, intelligence self-awareness and oblivious, and for better or for worse you feel as if you’ve walked a kilometer in his Norwegian shoes.
Next up we have the finale of Vol. 6–which is three times longer than Vol. 5! A happy ending seems unlikely.
Graphic: Infidelity and Alcohol
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Bullying, Drug use, and Death of parent
Minor: Cancer, Drug use, Mental illness, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Vomit, and Grief
grayjay's review against another edition
4.0
At the start we find 20 year old Knausgaard returning from travels abroad. He is excited about moving to Bergen and starting his new life as a writer and student at the Writing Academy. He is as unsure of himself and as eager to impress as ever.
He describes a kind of loneliness born of his eternal shame. There are thoughts that he knows he can't share with anyone, and so he is alone. Although, I don't know how much writing this book and exposing all of these thoughts negates this idea.
He meets a woman named Tonje whom he falls in love with and we're faced with one of the most disturbing scenes of the book, when he cuts himself in the face with a broken bottle because he is drunk and jealous of her and his brother. He continues his mode of laying everything bare in the most humiliating detail. I don't particularly like reading about nihilistic benders and masturbating to art books, but I recognise how bold and courageous Knausgaard is. He is too honest. He goes too far, and it's just far enough.
Knausgaard takes a summer job working at the kind of care facility for those with severe disabilities that existed in the 80s. He describes the difficulty he has with the patients there, both practically and emotionally. He is critical of the institutional system, as a "storage, a warehouse for unwanted people", yet, in typical Knausgaard style, he lays bare his disgust with working there, his humiliation, and in juxtapositioning these thoughts with other selfish thoughts such as his lust over a co-worker, he challenges you to judge him. If he's self-assured enough to point out his own weaknesses so baldly, are they really his weaknesses? Or is this a character he's created to turn a mirror on the reader?
Much of the book is concerned with writer's block and his struggle becoming a writer. Watching his peers make their literary debuts while he struggles to get stories published. He goes back and forth on whether or not to give up entirely.
The novel ends where Book 2 picks up, with him leaving his wide Tonje after a series of marital troubles and moving to Stockholm.
He describes a kind of loneliness born of his eternal shame. There are thoughts that he knows he can't share with anyone, and so he is alone. Although, I don't know how much writing this book and exposing all of these thoughts negates this idea.
He meets a woman named Tonje whom he falls in love with and we're faced with one of the most disturbing scenes of the book, when he cuts himself in the face with a broken bottle because he is drunk and jealous of her and his brother. He continues his mode of laying everything bare in the most humiliating detail. I don't particularly like reading about nihilistic benders and masturbating to art books, but I recognise how bold and courageous Knausgaard is. He is too honest. He goes too far, and it's just far enough.
Knausgaard takes a summer job working at the kind of care facility for those with severe disabilities that existed in the 80s. He describes the difficulty he has with the patients there, both practically and emotionally. He is critical of the institutional system, as a "storage, a warehouse for unwanted people", yet, in typical Knausgaard style, he lays bare his disgust with working there, his humiliation, and in juxtapositioning these thoughts with other selfish thoughts such as his lust over a co-worker, he challenges you to judge him. If he's self-assured enough to point out his own weaknesses so baldly, are they really his weaknesses? Or is this a character he's created to turn a mirror on the reader?
Much of the book is concerned with writer's block and his struggle becoming a writer. Watching his peers make their literary debuts while he struggles to get stories published. He goes back and forth on whether or not to give up entirely.
The novel ends where Book 2 picks up, with him leaving his wide Tonje after a series of marital troubles and moving to Stockholm.
barnleke's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
jstrahan's review against another edition
5.0
Karl Ove’s back and this time it’s personal (still). This one’s focused on him studying writing in Bergen and takes us all the way through until he is a successful writer. It’s either the best one so far or the one I read most recently, but either way I’m still loving it
charliekusiel's review against another edition
5.0
It is clear that Karl Ove Knausgaard has written - and achieved - a sort of ‘mega-novel’ by his fifth volume of My Struggle.
In books 1 and 2, Knausgaard writes from his conscience. The words flow straight from him onto the page, unbound. In books 3 and 4, he develops a more precise approach: the text takes on a strictly chronological form, recalling instances not as they come to him in his study but as sequences of events, recalling everything that he can and ordering them. He lays out a storyboard in the narrative and emphasizes the minute. It is incredibly effective.
In reading My Struggle: Book 5 Some Rain Must Fall, one may say that it is in agreement with this form of the last books, following the same logical pattern. In many ways, this is absolutely correct. As more and more pages are added to his project as a whole, the scope becomes increasingly Proustian: he is tackling the mundane.
Why then does Karl Ove Knausgaard insist that he set out to write something that he calls an “anti-Proust experiment?” This is a difficult question to tackle. One may argue that, if this is the case, then no, he did not accomplish his goal. Perhaps this is true. How is it then, that, despite keeping his form the same, continuing down the same path as books 3 and 4, this fifth volume seems to turn the entire project on its head? At no point does he stray from the microscope he so carefully holds over his life, painstakingly digging up the most inconsequential details in this prison that he writes himself into.
It is in this fifth book that the volume of what he has written, literally the sheer quantity, becomes large enough that the true purpose of the project as a whole begins to come to fruition. Knausgaard’s close examination of the micro is not to create a study of the micro itself, as it would seem in each of the previous books, but instead a cumulative and meticulously constructed study of the macro, crafted sentence by sentence, over several thousand pages.
What is, he forces his readers to ask, a struggle, a life? Big question for a big book…
“I waited outside in the warm dusk smoking and watching the lights along the road that were beginning to become more and more distinct as evening fell, surrounded by the drone of traffic, occasionally interrupted by the brief but heavy slamming of doors, the sudden voices of people crossing the parking lot on their way to or from the service station. Inside, people sat silently eating on their own except for a few families who swamped the tables they sat around. I was filled with an inner exaltation, this was precisely what I loved best, the familiar, the known - the motorway, the gas station, the cafeteria, which weren’t familiar at all actually, everywhere I looked details differed from the places I knew.”
Karl Ove Knausgaard bridges these massive books together one moment at a time, like sewing a tapestry thread by thread. The micro, very slowly, becomes a large picture of the macro. And is this not the picture of a life as it really is? We’re all human, we can only comprehend the present, one moment at a time. When time has passed, all we can ask is “where did the time go?”, but, like he does, all we can do is retrace it, one scene, one memory at a time, until the whole thing is simply a blur.
No, My Struggle is surely not a study of the mundane. It is the replica of a life, built word by word, so that at great length, it becomes terrifyingly real and honest.
Knausgaard encapsulates his own life on paper to offer the raw human experience, and in order to do that, must be completely self-centered, searingly anti-Proustian. He relies on his own shame, guilt, solitude and beauty to uncover this truth: that every individual experience, however profoundly lonely, everything from the death of his father to his feelings of sexual inadequacy, is a shared experience.
By deceiving his readers for 2,500 pages, Knausgaard achieves a monumental feat in his fifth volume. What does this all mean? He answers it, completely, in my opinion, in a way that is as deeply meaningful and complex as any human life can be.
Looking forward to reading his sixth and final volume.
In books 1 and 2, Knausgaard writes from his conscience. The words flow straight from him onto the page, unbound. In books 3 and 4, he develops a more precise approach: the text takes on a strictly chronological form, recalling instances not as they come to him in his study but as sequences of events, recalling everything that he can and ordering them. He lays out a storyboard in the narrative and emphasizes the minute. It is incredibly effective.
In reading My Struggle: Book 5 Some Rain Must Fall, one may say that it is in agreement with this form of the last books, following the same logical pattern. In many ways, this is absolutely correct. As more and more pages are added to his project as a whole, the scope becomes increasingly Proustian: he is tackling the mundane.
Why then does Karl Ove Knausgaard insist that he set out to write something that he calls an “anti-Proust experiment?” This is a difficult question to tackle. One may argue that, if this is the case, then no, he did not accomplish his goal. Perhaps this is true. How is it then, that, despite keeping his form the same, continuing down the same path as books 3 and 4, this fifth volume seems to turn the entire project on its head? At no point does he stray from the microscope he so carefully holds over his life, painstakingly digging up the most inconsequential details in this prison that he writes himself into.
It is in this fifth book that the volume of what he has written, literally the sheer quantity, becomes large enough that the true purpose of the project as a whole begins to come to fruition. Knausgaard’s close examination of the micro is not to create a study of the micro itself, as it would seem in each of the previous books, but instead a cumulative and meticulously constructed study of the macro, crafted sentence by sentence, over several thousand pages.
What is, he forces his readers to ask, a struggle, a life? Big question for a big book…
“I waited outside in the warm dusk smoking and watching the lights along the road that were beginning to become more and more distinct as evening fell, surrounded by the drone of traffic, occasionally interrupted by the brief but heavy slamming of doors, the sudden voices of people crossing the parking lot on their way to or from the service station. Inside, people sat silently eating on their own except for a few families who swamped the tables they sat around. I was filled with an inner exaltation, this was precisely what I loved best, the familiar, the known - the motorway, the gas station, the cafeteria, which weren’t familiar at all actually, everywhere I looked details differed from the places I knew.”
Karl Ove Knausgaard bridges these massive books together one moment at a time, like sewing a tapestry thread by thread. The micro, very slowly, becomes a large picture of the macro. And is this not the picture of a life as it really is? We’re all human, we can only comprehend the present, one moment at a time. When time has passed, all we can ask is “where did the time go?”, but, like he does, all we can do is retrace it, one scene, one memory at a time, until the whole thing is simply a blur.
No, My Struggle is surely not a study of the mundane. It is the replica of a life, built word by word, so that at great length, it becomes terrifyingly real and honest.
Knausgaard encapsulates his own life on paper to offer the raw human experience, and in order to do that, must be completely self-centered, searingly anti-Proustian. He relies on his own shame, guilt, solitude and beauty to uncover this truth: that every individual experience, however profoundly lonely, everything from the death of his father to his feelings of sexual inadequacy, is a shared experience.
By deceiving his readers for 2,500 pages, Knausgaard achieves a monumental feat in his fifth volume. What does this all mean? He answers it, completely, in my opinion, in a way that is as deeply meaningful and complex as any human life can be.
Looking forward to reading his sixth and final volume.
lewreviews's review against another edition
5.0
It may be the best one of the series so far. These books are my happy place. The words just flood over me. There is no easier read than Knausgaard's books. I don't know how he does it. It's just so... addictive... and maddening... and INCREDIBLE. This is the first one of the five that I've read that has been set in the exact age that I am currently living through. A special experience. Comforting, as well.
brannonkrkhuang's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of the best books in the series - astoundingly engaging and unbearably full of Karl Ove doing just the most classic Karl Ove bullshit. Don’t miss it (or do!)
hb1312's review against another edition
adventurous
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
5.0
Non fiction
sweetcuppincakes's review against another edition
5.0
Slow start, unlike the others. Things kick in as his life seems to fall in place, and connecting to events in Book 1 and Book 2 brings things full circle in a way. The father has to appear at some point, he is the main character after all. And I love how the question of why there was so much blood when his father's body was found - something that definitely lingered in the back of my mind the first time it was mentioned in Book 1 - has STILL NOT BEEN ANSWERED, lol.
It definitely makes you want to pick up Book 2 right away, but since I've already read 1 and 2 twice, it's time to read 3 and 4 for the second time... biding my time till this September....
It definitely makes you want to pick up Book 2 right away, but since I've already read 1 and 2 twice, it's time to read 3 and 4 for the second time... biding my time till this September....
hellasmella's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0