I finally finished My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard, and I'm not sure what I think of it. The writing is amazing. Even in translation the prose alone carries you alone. He can be very philosophical in a good and readable way. And he is brutally honest about his own weaknesses and failures.
The downside of this book is the length and the amount of detail. When he writes about running out for beer 20 years ago, he tells you what the clerk looked like, how much the beer cost, and what bills he handed over. How accurate is this? He's got to be filling in holes here. No one can remember that much. I really need to read more about this book -- and the other five that comprise part of the whole project -- to find out how much of it he made up. The thing is that all these details do contribute to an incredibly lifelike portrait of one man's life.
I haven't decided if I'm going to read more. He spent a year teaching north of the Arctic Circle, an area that I'm fascinated by, so I'm tempted to read Volume IV when it comes out in paperback.
Tonight, I'm going to try Elizabeth Graver's Unravelling. I read it years ago and loved it. When I came across this copy at a library sale, I couldn't resist picking it up for 50 cents. It will be interesting to see how I like it so many years later.
I'm joining up with Nicole. Come see what everyone else is knitting and reading!
