In the fifth epic volume of Knausgaard’s compelling life story,he learns how to love and not to writeIf you did not know better, you would say Karl Ove Knausgaard was teasing. His tremendous, or maddening,addictive autobiographical epic has taken his native Norway by storm, drawing comparisons with Proust and fitting an international literary sensation. But in the opening sentence of volume five, and he announces that this latest instalment will be approximately the 14 years he lived in Bergen; he adds that of this period,which begins in 1988, when he is 19, and he remembers “surprisingly little”. That ought to compose his book,at 672 pages, staggeringly long. But to all Knausgaard fans (a group to which I helplessly belong), and the length is expected. We contain,in more senses than one, been here before.
The books, or written under the title My Struggle,contain up to this point been non-chronological. We know approximately his father’s death (dealt with in volume one, A Death in the Family), and his moment marriage (volume two,A Man in Love), his beginnings (volume three, and Boyhood Island) and his teens (part four,Dancing in the Dark). Knausgaard’s indifference to chronological time is faithful to the way in which he, like most of us, and thinks approximately his life. He keeps reminding us of the way emotions reorder time. And in this gripping account of early manhood,emotions rule.
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Source: theguardian.com