Reviews: A Death in the Family (9)

This is a forensic fictionalised account of part of the author's adolescence, and of coping with his father's death and its dispiriting and degrading aftermath. There's a mass of detail here, together with unflinching self-examination and a determination to leave nothing out, however banal or sordid it might be. Well-publicised and inevitable questions around the author's reliability and honesty have been raised - it must have been a very difficult read for his immediate family - but this is much more than a prurient look at a stranger's life; in his quest for truth, Knausgaard confronts emotions we can all recognise.

A bit of a curate's egg, but rather too introspective even for my liking. There are some good descriptive passages, particularly those that give a sense of how the snow pervades everything in Norway. Being of a similar age to the author, some of his observations on being a teenager in the 1980s resonated with me and his anguish concerning his grandmother and her dementia was painful and realistic. But all in all, a rather slow and laborious book, which I could not recommend.

I`m not sure how I really feel about this book. I`ve never been too keen on autobiographies and this novel is certainly that. I was given this book to review, but most probably I wouldn`t of picked it up myself.
On the positive, the author`s character and family history is fascinating as well as his observation of human nature and behaviour. However - and this is the negative part - his writing style was often dull and uninteresting. Often I found it difficult to stay with the story. Also it felt more often, that I was reading a self-therapy book.
All in all, it did not grab my interest at all. This book I believe is mainly for those who enjoy autobiographies.

I spent most of this book wondering when something might happen. I read this for a book club and really had to struggle to get it finished, I felt nothing for any of the characters especially the main one.

Would I recommend this? Not even to my worst enemy.

The old adage, never judge a book by it's cover...The cover was a big clue as to the book's content. The cover looks depressing and is sub-titled My Struggle. I hadn't heard of the author before so haven't read his novel.
His life seemed to be one struggle after another - his parents separated and he didn't see much of his mother, his father was an alcoholic and his only brother was older and didn't feature much in his recollections.
His adolescence was the most interesting part- I found the section about his father's death difficult to comprehend and found the detail a bit too explicit.
Overall considering his upbringing he has done remarkably well for himself but I'm not in a hurry to read any of his other work.

I am not sure why these books are so addictive but they undoubtably are. This first volume of Karl Ove's novelised memoirs tells the story of his childhood and later moves on to the death of his Father. The writing is so good and so evocative that reading through brought back memories for me of events in my own life that I had long forgotten. I warn you, if you read this, you will soon be ordering the two other volumes that are currently available.

Decided to read this after hearing all the hype, here’re my thoughts:

The reason why this book became popular is the absolute clarity Knausgaard is able to relay the most intricate details of his younger self - both the sensually and his innermost thoughts. His honesty recounting the difference between his thoughts and actions are what shines through.

However, albeit this, he puts no weighting on either in the way he writes. Therefore setting is impossible to picture accurately in your own mind because he meticulously recalls every detail making it impossible, for you, to ‘fill in the blanks’. Everything in this book is personal, meaning you have to endure long paragraphs that seem to have no relevance. I think if you have access to his deeper thoughts then they are only interpretable if it has been contextualised this way, along with all the ruthless minutiae.

For me the pages flew by, it is not a difficult read, but the whole series totals 3,600 pages - so not for the faint of heart.

This is a big book in all respects, weighing in at four hundred pages and completely unafraid of tackling the big themes: death, personal responsibility, love, ruin, death again. Heavily fragranced with a northern gloom from the outset, it's a minutely-detailed evocation of one man's consciousness, growing up in Norway in the mid 70s; struggling to create art and agonised by his difficult relationship with a distant, austere and harsh father. The detail is so intensely rendered that it starts to achieve an almost hallucinatory quality- everything is sifted through with a tone of reverent evenness: eating a fried egg; falling in love; noting the furniture in a funeral director's office. For this reason it achieves an uncanny sense of a fully-examined life. A highly unusal novel that yields moment after moment of piercing brillance.

Knausgaard's autobiographical novel (only the first of many) uses excessive detail to conjure up the reality of day-to-day life and conjure up vivid memories. There is really nothing exceptional or interesting in a plot sense about Knausgaard's experience, although the sadness of his father and grandmother's demise (which form a centrepiece of this book) does make for quite compelling reading. There are snippets of childhood, his life as a rock-music loving teen in the 1980s, all told with excruciating honesty. Knausgaard is at his strongest when he is absolutely open, honest and upfront about his worst qualities, his shameful feelings, the weird details of experience. Does 'My Struggle' have to be so long? That's really where the problem lies. I have bought the second book. I will read it. Can I get through all of them? We'll see. There is undoubtedly something addictive about the way this is told. It is exceptional in its brutal exactitude, searing honesty, and relatable mundanity, perhaps.