A Death in the Family

"My Struggle" is a six volume semi-autobiographical novel, or "auto-fiction", by the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard. The six volumes run into three thousand six hundred pages and is one of the most talked about pieces of creative art in western literary circles. He is considered a wunderkind in Parisian cafes for his earlier novels, and "My Struggle" which has been translated from Norwegian. This review will cover volume one, or Book One, originally published as "A Death in the Family".

In this volume, Knausgaard talks about two aspects of his life: his boyhood and events surrounding his father's death when he was twenty seven.  His book doesn't have a grand theme nor does the plot change from one episode to another. Nonetheless it is a masterpiece, and for many reasons. For one, he has a gift for description of objects, scenery, and nature from the past, and weaves them into a compelling story. He narrates at great length many incidents from his early life, and his ability to recount details from the past and paint them with the finest brush is uncanny. For example, early on, he describes an incident where he recalls that after a fishing boat sank he saw a face in the sea, the sea had formed into the shape of a face, almost an apparition. And then one could consider his recollection of how during the New Year's Eve in 1985, he and his friend carried a bag of beer in an effort to hide it from his family and avoid being detected for underage drinking.

Part 2 of the volume covers his trip to Kristiansand with his brother Yngve to arrange for his father's funeral. As they make arrangement for the funeral and burial, he describes the process of preparing the house--his grandmother's--where the funeral would take place. The house was in utter disrepair, and a mess with piles of clothes and dirt, stench, and barely usable bathrooms. He describes methodically the process they undertake and it is a good lesson for "do it yourselfers", particularly for those who undertake a cleaning process after two people lived there in total disregard for rules of sanitation and healthy living. However, Karl Ove has some very readable passages on his relationship with his brother, on his journey through youth, as he goes from the Academy of Creative Writing to college in Bergen, his first marriage with Tonje, and reflections on the meaning of life and death. His interviews with Norwegian poets and writers while he tries to make his mark as a writer are also interesting. 

The writer's ability to paint events from various stages of his life is breathtakingly fresh. This skill, in describing his surroundings to highlight real events to bring out the starkness of these incidents, is called "hyperrealism" which is a label used for "realism in art characterized by depiction of real life in an unusual or striking manner". Knausgaard is frequently compared with the French writer Marcel Proust, and his literary style is considered Proustian. His auto-fiction is Proustian for two reasons: Most of the book is based on recollection triggered by his father's death and the time he and his brother Yngve  spends at his grandmother's house while preparing for the funeral. Another Proustian trait evident in this book is the long-winded and sometimes rambling digressions that Knausgaard indulges in.

Fortunately, his writing style makes long ruminations easy to read. Given his keen sense of art, music and literature, for someone like me who spent much of my time in the USA during the period covered in this book, his references to events of the time come alive.

The first half of Book One is basically a recollection of his adolescence and teenage years. His most important relationship was with his father, but his elder brother Yngve and his grandmother play important roles too. He details how tyrannical and abusive his father was. Sometimes his father was distant, and mocked him because of his difficulties with pronunciations. He says, "My father filled the rooms with disquiet, my mother filled them with gentleness, patience, melancholy, and on occasion, if she came home from work and was tired, also with a faint yet noticeable undercurrent of irritability." But his father was also closer to him than to his brother. His father took him fishing on the sea in the morning before school very early in the morning when it was dark and cold. He wanted to say no, but could not since it would be considered a sign of weakness by him, and he hated it. But he also acknowledges, "I know he did this for my sake, and he had never done it for Yngve".

The book has a beautiful beginning but the second part reeks of death, alcoholism, and self-destruction. We find him in 1985 and then the time line jumps to 2003 when he had moved to Stockholm from his native Norway, and remarried a poet he knew.  The transition from first to second part happens with the birth of his first child. The narrative then turns back to the events in 1998 when his father died. His father's death disturbs him, and he can't understand how the man he knew and raised him could come to such a catastrophic end.  However, his description is never maudlin, although he mentions that several points he was sobbing. Similarly, the storytelling of his own state of drunkenness while waiting for the funeral is a little contrived but brilliant. 

Ironically, his drunkenness reminds the reader of his father's condition before his death, and it appears he might be highlighting it to show his kinship with his father. His penmanship is brilliant, and the storyline is as good as fiction but has more life, more heart, and emotions. He was mad at his father because he self-destroyed himself. A former school teacher, alcoholism takes hold of him and he moved in with his old mother. During this period, the father would stay at home, drink, and lost his motivation to live. It seems that the sons embark upon a mission to undo the damage their father caused both physically and emotionally, in just the few years he lived in with his mother and encircled her in his world of booze, deterioration, and self-abuse.

Knausgaard waxes poetic in describing his feeling of love and art. He is lyrical as he narrates his own feelings, his emotions, his state of mind, when he realizes he is in love. "That night I couldn't sit still, ...I felt as if I were bigger than the world, as if I had everything inside me, and that there was nothing left to strive for. Humanity was small, history was small, the Earth was small, yes, even the universe, which they said was endless, was small. I was bigger than everything".  While browsing a book about Constable, a British painter, and his work mostly oil sketches, studies of cloud, countryside, sea, he writes, "I didn't need to do any more than let my eyes skim over them before I was moved to tears. ..... ...an oil sketch of a cloud formation from September 6, 1822, there was nothing there that could explain the strength of my feelings. At the top, a patch of blue sky. Beneath, whitish mist. Then the rolling clouds."  

His ability to contrast is quite masterful. One example is the contrast he portrays between his brother's matter-of-fact coping but his own strong reactions at the father's death; another is the contrast between his first wife Tonje and his to worldly sensitivities.  On the latter he writes, "Her eyes lit up when she started talking about food, and she was a talented cook; even if it was only pizza she was making, she put her heart and soul into it. …And she had moved in with someone who regarded meals, home comforts, and closeness as necessary evils." But, I must mention this self-portrayal is odd for a person who was moved to tears by Constable, loved music, and studied literature.

The volume is filled with self-criticism, his close friendship with his brother, references to music, old memories and reflection on life.

Some other gems are : "I saw life; I thought about death." "For several years I had tried to write about my father, but had gotten nowhere, .. Writing is more about destroying than creating. "

The initial state of shock after his father's death: "..such was my state now, I was numb, and the numbness prevailed over everything else." "For the first time since Yngve had called I could see him in my mind's eye. Not the man he had been in recent years, but the man he was when I was growing up, when, in winter, we went fishing with him, off the island of Tromoya...."

Later on assessing the work they would have to do to clean up the mess his Dad left the house in and referring to his brother: "we faced a common foe, Dad, that is."

He writes with facility, using phrases from literature, philosophy, art, music, and current cultural scene, but his most beautiful pieces involve touches of involuntary memory (memory that is triggered by event or smells), particularly as he walks aimlessly after visiting his father's body, as well as the nostalgia he feels for his grandparents. 

His books have been translated into at least 15 languages. In Norway, where the hardcover editions cost more than $50 each, nearly a half-million copies of the books have sold, or one for every nine adults in the country. Why would you read a six-volume, 3600 page Norwegian novel about his experience in writing this book? It is aesthetically forceful, breathtakingly good, and "intense and vital". I leave the readers with one of his many references to death: "Death, which I have regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, as jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor."

The reviewer is a regular contributor to this section.