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erickibler4's review
4.0
This book takes Karl Ove through his twenties, where he develops himself as a writer. For long stretches he thinks he'll never be one, or at least that he'll never be the fiction writer he envisions. He sometimes sees himself as a literary critic, in his mind a lesser thing than a literary novelist.
We see him though several infatuations and relationships, and he brings himself full circle to where he was at the beginning of Volume One, when his father died and his marriage to his wife Tonje crumbled.
This is not my favorite volume of the series, but they are all worthwhile.
We see him though several infatuations and relationships, and he brings himself full circle to where he was at the beginning of Volume One, when his father died and his marriage to his wife Tonje crumbled.
This is not my favorite volume of the series, but they are all worthwhile.
aceface's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
zhengsterz's review against another edition
dark
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Knausgard is once again being brutally honest, revealing himself to be quite the piece of shit(constant infidelity) with a lot of baggage from childhood
tom_in_london's review against another edition
5.0
By this point Knausgård's writing is becoming more assured thanks (perhaps because of the translator) to the insistent use of commas rather than full stops or semicolons. You can feel the writing getting better as it flows quickly and smoothly now, with a greater mastery; so smoothly, in fact, that many descriptive passages run too easily by; at times the reader has to consciously stop, slow down, and savour them more carefully, re-reading:
If only I were able to describe a forest seen from above! The openness and freedom of deciduous trees, the way their crowns ripple as one, seen from a distance, green and magnificent and alive, though not alive in our way, no, alive in their own equally simple secretive way. The sheerness and verticality of spruces, the frugality and loftiness of pines, the paleness and green of birches, and the aspen, the trembling of aspens as the wind whistles up the mountainside!
Once again we are brought into the intimacies of the Author's sexual angst. Still struggling to form a relationship with a woman, he resorts to intensive masturbation, looking for pornographic images wherever he can find them in a very rainy, steeply sloping Bergen (where most of this book is located). By now his taste in porn has developed from the cheap "tits and bums" magazines he searched for as a boy, at the local waste dump (see earlier volumes), to erotic imagery of a more sophisticated kind that he finds in art books:
During this time, as I flicked backwards and forwards, trying to decide which picture to go for, I wanked slowly, holding myself back. Maybe Delacroix? No, it had to be Ingres! Odalisque with Slave (1842). She's lying full length with her arms behind her head and is all wonderful curves, or, oh, of course The Turkish Bath (1862). Only women in this one and they were all naked.
The book is rich in personality portraits describing men and women in severe detail. There are hundreds of people in this book, and each one he encounters is assessed physically (what they wear, their facial features, gait, accent, nervous tics) and in terms of their character as Knausgård perceives it. He is constantly on his guard, ever suspicious about the people he meets and what their motivations might be as he perseveres in his struggle to succeed as a writer (in that simple secretive way he ascribes to how pine trees grow).
A new acquaintance in the publishing world, Tore, is given the full Knausgård treatment: He was short of stature but possessed an immense energy, on the one hand there was something open and receptive about him - he was the kind of guy who would look around when he laughed and drop comments all over the place, completely unconcerned by how he might be interpreted - and on the other there was something closed about him, which could manifest itself after immersing himself in one of his frequent bouts of sociability, then he might suddenly go absent, his eyes were totally vacant, and he heard nothing of what was being said, it lasted a few seconds, that was all, and wasn't very obvious, but I noticed it at our very first editorial session, and it sparked an interest.
The second half of the book includes a detailed account of how - at last, after so many failed attempts - our Author manages to find a woman (Tonje) with whom he thinks he can develop a lasting relationship and even marry, although meanwhile he continues to drink himself stupid on every available occasion. This leads to illicit bouts of bonking (one would hardly describe these desperate couplings as "lovemaking") and pangs of guilt about his own infidelity. In the end he decides to terminate the relationship with Tonje because he cannot find it in himself to stay faithful. He treats her harshly throughout and is in the habit of shutting her out of his life as he refuses to go out with her and stays focussed on his writing, or even takes himself off to a remote western island to write. Everything else must be sacrificed. Weeks and weeks are spent writing just a few pages trying to develop ideas that then go nowhere and are thrown in the wastebasket. Tonje is just another failed effort, another discarded page.
So far, so banal, any reader might think. How many novels have there been about this? But with Knausgård these efforts to relate to others are used in a different way. They are the collateral damage he perpetrates all around himself in his monomaniacal drive to find out how to become a successful writer. He buys dozens of books and borrows many others, reading voraciously everything he can get his hands on, trying to find out the secrets of great writing. This gives him the opportunity to describe how he comes to know the work of numerous Norwegian and non-Norwegian writers - remarkable exercises in an ingenous, honest, innocent kind of "literary criticism".
This book (as many others have already said) is a novel about writing a novel - a tremendous struggle that finally succeeds when he eventually becomes the famous writer he has always wanted to be - having trampled over everything that got in the way. It is a momentous read, very long and tortuous, that takes us all over the topography, landscapes, and geography of Norway (north and south) by road, rail, and ferry boat, with longer-distance journeys abroad barely mentioned as though they hardly mattered and only given a page or two (Florence, Norwich) but are all the more vivid for only being places glimpsed. When military service looms, he registers as a conscientious objector and is given various part time jobs, notably at state-run institutions for the severely mentally disabled. At one point the reader becomes very disturbed at the coldness and lack of sympathy Knausgård openly expresses for these people.
This is a man in his Thirties now, pursuing the affirmation that many men are driven to attain, desperate to make something of themselves, make their mark ruthlessly and singlemindedly, and hurting no matter who in that process which has become the meaning of life and its only purpose, to the sound of the rock music that obsesses him and that is probably not to every reader's musical taste: iterating and describing the effects on him of many Nordic and other bands, sizing people up on the basis of whether or not they happen to appreciate what he appreciates. The only people he trusts are his beloved older brother Yngve, his mother, his grandparents, and a few oldies who are not a threat. The chaotic decline, death and funeral of his dreadful, threatening father is described again here but from a different viewpoint.
This novel is enormous and epic, yet is also filled with tiny trivialities about opening a packet of biscuits or walking along a street. It takes the reader in its grip and holds them there, not wanting to stop reading. Knausgård may not be the kindest or most considerate of human beings but his novel is completely open and honest: unpretentious, always anti-elitist and rebellious in spirit, trying to competely transform the world by sifting and selecting until it becomes a place he can live in.
If only I were able to describe a forest seen from above! The openness and freedom of deciduous trees, the way their crowns ripple as one, seen from a distance, green and magnificent and alive, though not alive in our way, no, alive in their own equally simple secretive way. The sheerness and verticality of spruces, the frugality and loftiness of pines, the paleness and green of birches, and the aspen, the trembling of aspens as the wind whistles up the mountainside!
Once again we are brought into the intimacies of the Author's sexual angst. Still struggling to form a relationship with a woman, he resorts to intensive masturbation, looking for pornographic images wherever he can find them in a very rainy, steeply sloping Bergen (where most of this book is located). By now his taste in porn has developed from the cheap "tits and bums" magazines he searched for as a boy, at the local waste dump (see earlier volumes), to erotic imagery of a more sophisticated kind that he finds in art books:
During this time, as I flicked backwards and forwards, trying to decide which picture to go for, I wanked slowly, holding myself back. Maybe Delacroix? No, it had to be Ingres! Odalisque with Slave (1842). She's lying full length with her arms behind her head and is all wonderful curves, or, oh, of course The Turkish Bath (1862). Only women in this one and they were all naked.
The book is rich in personality portraits describing men and women in severe detail. There are hundreds of people in this book, and each one he encounters is assessed physically (what they wear, their facial features, gait, accent, nervous tics) and in terms of their character as Knausgård perceives it. He is constantly on his guard, ever suspicious about the people he meets and what their motivations might be as he perseveres in his struggle to succeed as a writer (in that simple secretive way he ascribes to how pine trees grow).
A new acquaintance in the publishing world, Tore, is given the full Knausgård treatment: He was short of stature but possessed an immense energy, on the one hand there was something open and receptive about him - he was the kind of guy who would look around when he laughed and drop comments all over the place, completely unconcerned by how he might be interpreted - and on the other there was something closed about him, which could manifest itself after immersing himself in one of his frequent bouts of sociability, then he might suddenly go absent, his eyes were totally vacant, and he heard nothing of what was being said, it lasted a few seconds, that was all, and wasn't very obvious, but I noticed it at our very first editorial session, and it sparked an interest.
The second half of the book includes a detailed account of how - at last, after so many failed attempts - our Author manages to find a woman (Tonje) with whom he thinks he can develop a lasting relationship and even marry, although meanwhile he continues to drink himself stupid on every available occasion. This leads to illicit bouts of bonking (one would hardly describe these desperate couplings as "lovemaking") and pangs of guilt about his own infidelity. In the end he decides to terminate the relationship with Tonje because he cannot find it in himself to stay faithful. He treats her harshly throughout and is in the habit of shutting her out of his life as he refuses to go out with her and stays focussed on his writing, or even takes himself off to a remote western island to write. Everything else must be sacrificed. Weeks and weeks are spent writing just a few pages trying to develop ideas that then go nowhere and are thrown in the wastebasket. Tonje is just another failed effort, another discarded page.
So far, so banal, any reader might think. How many novels have there been about this? But with Knausgård these efforts to relate to others are used in a different way. They are the collateral damage he perpetrates all around himself in his monomaniacal drive to find out how to become a successful writer. He buys dozens of books and borrows many others, reading voraciously everything he can get his hands on, trying to find out the secrets of great writing. This gives him the opportunity to describe how he comes to know the work of numerous Norwegian and non-Norwegian writers - remarkable exercises in an ingenous, honest, innocent kind of "literary criticism".
This book (as many others have already said) is a novel about writing a novel - a tremendous struggle that finally succeeds when he eventually becomes the famous writer he has always wanted to be - having trampled over everything that got in the way. It is a momentous read, very long and tortuous, that takes us all over the topography, landscapes, and geography of Norway (north and south) by road, rail, and ferry boat, with longer-distance journeys abroad barely mentioned as though they hardly mattered and only given a page or two (Florence, Norwich) but are all the more vivid for only being places glimpsed. When military service looms, he registers as a conscientious objector and is given various part time jobs, notably at state-run institutions for the severely mentally disabled. At one point the reader becomes very disturbed at the coldness and lack of sympathy Knausgård openly expresses for these people.
This is a man in his Thirties now, pursuing the affirmation that many men are driven to attain, desperate to make something of themselves, make their mark ruthlessly and singlemindedly, and hurting no matter who in that process which has become the meaning of life and its only purpose, to the sound of the rock music that obsesses him and that is probably not to every reader's musical taste: iterating and describing the effects on him of many Nordic and other bands, sizing people up on the basis of whether or not they happen to appreciate what he appreciates. The only people he trusts are his beloved older brother Yngve, his mother, his grandparents, and a few oldies who are not a threat. The chaotic decline, death and funeral of his dreadful, threatening father is described again here but from a different viewpoint.
This novel is enormous and epic, yet is also filled with tiny trivialities about opening a packet of biscuits or walking along a street. It takes the reader in its grip and holds them there, not wanting to stop reading. Knausgård may not be the kindest or most considerate of human beings but his novel is completely open and honest: unpretentious, always anti-elitist and rebellious in spirit, trying to competely transform the world by sifting and selecting until it becomes a place he can live in.
dwrevans's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Woweee, what a read! I loved this so much and genuinely think it has changed my perception of literature, life etc. dramatic words, but the rawness of this book and - the struggle - is real. KOK is not a very loveable guy by the end of it, but the flaws on show are very real, disarming, and human. Possible the best novel in the series, I was hooked and went on a real emotional rollercoaster with this one. His shame and his decisions are one thing, but the way he writes about how he understands his life and the relationships within it are so great and relatable. I really love it and the sense of struggling for this heavy dream of being a writer (often very selfishly) whilst grasping for meaning and meaningful relationships. Proper banger
entropia's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
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
4.75
kirsten0929's review
5.0
What can I say, I love these books. Why I find them fascinating and infinitely readable and not boring and forgettable, I have no idea. I think part of it is the brutal honesty. You read it and think, okay, I've thought those things but I would never admit it. He just puts it out there, what he's thought, felt, and done, but in no way is he proud of it. Quite the opposite, it all seems part of his self-loathing. Another reason I think I like it is that it's just clean, efficient writing. Neither of these things explain why I like it so much, though. Looks like the sixth, and final, installment won't be available in English until next year. Arg, the wait!!
pandarius_pinkman's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-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
ciarafrances's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0