You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.22 AVERAGE
4.22 AVERAGE
This was way better than the previous two (Autumn and Winter), but then it also put them in context and made them seem better in retrospect. This book also reassured me that I am not crazy to think and feel the things I do about being a father of young children.
I can't decide whether I like the book or not -- it's like this meticulous painting: every single detail is laid out with the most exquisite brush -- but after a while it feels tedious, exhausting.
But of course it is beautifully written, the sentences, the explosion of nature, the undercurrent of emotions. It's just this way of portraiting doesn't really work for me. Instead of endearing, it's alienating.
But of course it is beautifully written, the sentences, the explosion of nature, the undercurrent of emotions. It's just this way of portraiting doesn't really work for me. Instead of endearing, it's alienating.
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s third book/letter/memoir in his seasons quartet varies from his first two, in that it is more of a memory play. As both August and Winter cover short essays on various items and traits that are unfamiliar to a newborn (otters, snow, personalities, q-tips), Spring is instead a long essay that mostly takes place over one day.
Still, it is written to his daughter, who is now born and accompanying him throughout the day, and still, Knausgaard’s writing breathes life into the every day/mundane —“When the sun hung in the western sky, deeper in color than it had been before that day, orange with a faint reddish hue, and the wind had died down completely, I dressed you in your little overalls while you lay in my lap with your lead against my knee…” — and still it is with clarity and insight that he writes: “Life is made up of events that have to be parried. And that the moments of happiness in life all have to do with he opposite.”
With that, Knausgaard tells the story of the dark days of his wife’s mental illness, which as he attempted to parry the conflicts that the immobility of his wife brought, covered him in shame and guilt. It also intensified the joys surrounding him: “In the middle of a wonderful summer. With three delightful, suntanned children running around. In a magnificent garden. How could she turn away from all that?”
Spring is Knausgaard’s attempt to make sense of this dark period, of understanding his wife’s illness and finding the simple joy of love and family, balancing his natural tendency toward solitude while avoiding the deprive that comes from loneliness: “The beautiful and the good gain meaning through connection, through exchange, through what stands open between ourselves and the world… It is through resonance that we connect to the world, and that is what happened to your mother, the world no longer resonated within her. The connection was broken, she was shut out."
Spring is about extracting magic from this external world— through his eyes as a writer and through his daughter’s eyes as a child — and sharing it with others, through other, particularly, with a tilt toward his relationship with nature, “which could come rushing like an avalanche if something unexpected awakened them — the call of a bird in spring, the cool, almost glossy air on a summer morning, the smell of wet snow in winter, fog in the dark of an autumn evening.” And: “You see, the beauty of this world means nothing if you stand alone in it.”
In a fantastic closing to the book, Knausgaard takes part in a Swedish parade/festival and bonfire, gleaming with inner happiness yet maintaining his external natural reserve, he tries to project love on this daughter, and his other children giving them a sense of security and comfort in a chaotic world filled sometimes with darkness, yet also terrifying beauty, and leaving them with this one thought: “Sometimes it hurts to live, but there is always something to live for.”
Still, it is written to his daughter, who is now born and accompanying him throughout the day, and still, Knausgaard’s writing breathes life into the every day/mundane —“When the sun hung in the western sky, deeper in color than it had been before that day, orange with a faint reddish hue, and the wind had died down completely, I dressed you in your little overalls while you lay in my lap with your lead against my knee…” — and still it is with clarity and insight that he writes: “Life is made up of events that have to be parried. And that the moments of happiness in life all have to do with he opposite.”
With that, Knausgaard tells the story of the dark days of his wife’s mental illness, which as he attempted to parry the conflicts that the immobility of his wife brought, covered him in shame and guilt. It also intensified the joys surrounding him: “In the middle of a wonderful summer. With three delightful, suntanned children running around. In a magnificent garden. How could she turn away from all that?”
Spring is Knausgaard’s attempt to make sense of this dark period, of understanding his wife’s illness and finding the simple joy of love and family, balancing his natural tendency toward solitude while avoiding the deprive that comes from loneliness: “The beautiful and the good gain meaning through connection, through exchange, through what stands open between ourselves and the world… It is through resonance that we connect to the world, and that is what happened to your mother, the world no longer resonated within her. The connection was broken, she was shut out."
Spring is about extracting magic from this external world— through his eyes as a writer and through his daughter’s eyes as a child — and sharing it with others, through other, particularly, with a tilt toward his relationship with nature, “which could come rushing like an avalanche if something unexpected awakened them — the call of a bird in spring, the cool, almost glossy air on a summer morning, the smell of wet snow in winter, fog in the dark of an autumn evening.” And: “You see, the beauty of this world means nothing if you stand alone in it.”
In a fantastic closing to the book, Knausgaard takes part in a Swedish parade/festival and bonfire, gleaming with inner happiness yet maintaining his external natural reserve, he tries to project love on this daughter, and his other children giving them a sense of security and comfort in a chaotic world filled sometimes with darkness, yet also terrifying beauty, and leaving them with this one thought: “Sometimes it hurts to live, but there is always something to live for.”
emotional
inspiring
tense
fast-paced
This third part of the Seasons series is very different from the two previous ones; in fact, it fits perfectly with the very long [b:My Struggle I-VI|39998189|My Struggle I-VI|Karl Ove Knausgård|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1525085057l/39998189._SX50_.jpg|61942128] series with which Knausgaard broke through. In this small book too we find that same alternation of self-denigrating introspection, of extremely detailed scenes on daily life and of very profound considerations on the wonder of existence.
In other words, Knausgard makes another attempt to put his individual reality on paper, with its big and its small sides, and to mirror it to what could be 'the' reality. And again it is a very shocking experiment, perhaps even more than in "My Struggle". Because Knausgard writes about the period that his wife was pregnant with their fourth child (this book is actually a long letter to that child), and again fell into the manic depression that had previously plagued her. At the beginning of this book her absence (she is admitted to the hospital) hangs like a heavy shadow over the family life that Knausgard is trying to keep running as well and as badly as it goes. Things get really bitter when he describes how his wife gradually becomes more and more locked into herself, and at a certain moment does a suicide attempt. From time to time you have the impression that the aim of this book is apologetic, Knausgard justifying his sometimes harsh attitude towards her, but a few pages later he describes his own stupidities with the same aplomb.
So this is a dark, wry and shocking book that only bears the title "Spring" because apparently after the birth of the child, light appears again in the family, coinciding with the spring festival in the Swedish village in which they live. I notice that Knausgard's books continue to attract and repel me at the same time, because he knows how to express the ugly and the painful as well as the sublime side of life like no other. Thus a (cowardly) mixed rating of 2.5 stars.
In other words, Knausgard makes another attempt to put his individual reality on paper, with its big and its small sides, and to mirror it to what could be 'the' reality. And again it is a very shocking experiment, perhaps even more than in "My Struggle". Because Knausgard writes about the period that his wife was pregnant with their fourth child (this book is actually a long letter to that child), and again fell into the manic depression that had previously plagued her. At the beginning of this book her absence (she is admitted to the hospital) hangs like a heavy shadow over the family life that Knausgard is trying to keep running as well and as badly as it goes. Things get really bitter when he describes how his wife gradually becomes more and more locked into herself, and at a certain moment does a suicide attempt. From time to time you have the impression that the aim of this book is apologetic, Knausgard justifying his sometimes harsh attitude towards her, but a few pages later he describes his own stupidities with the same aplomb.
So this is a dark, wry and shocking book that only bears the title "Spring" because apparently after the birth of the child, light appears again in the family, coinciding with the spring festival in the Swedish village in which they live. I notice that Knausgard's books continue to attract and repel me at the same time, because he knows how to express the ugly and the painful as well as the sublime side of life like no other. Thus a (cowardly) mixed rating of 2.5 stars.
Meditations on death, life, thinking about thinking, love, individuality vs community, what drives us, what breaks us, what an individual is, what a personality is, how our relationships with nature and the seasons change us and so much more. A masterpiece.
Meditative, that's the first word that comes to mind.
I was reading Be What You Are by Alan Watts while reading this and the two combined really encouraged me to slow things down. Of course it helps to slow down and watch sunrise/sunsets in a beautiful, rural Norwegian town, surrounded by family and children, and after success of the standard kind. And yet I didn't resent Knausgaard's peace.* It felt like an invitation, not a rebuke.
*yes I know that the book is not about an idyllic life and is an honest look at pain and depression; its power and contagion, and yet there is a certain peace that prevades the book, that suggests distance from the greater tumult of the world and an ability to docus exclusively on the self and the nuclear family.
I was reading Be What You Are by Alan Watts while reading this and the two combined really encouraged me to slow things down. Of course it helps to slow down and watch sunrise/sunsets in a beautiful, rural Norwegian town, surrounded by family and children, and after success of the standard kind. And yet I didn't resent Knausgaard's peace.* It felt like an invitation, not a rebuke.
*yes I know that the book is not about an idyllic life and is an honest look at pain and depression; its power and contagion, and yet there is a certain peace that prevades the book, that suggests distance from the greater tumult of the world and an ability to docus exclusively on the self and the nuclear family.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Forced institutionalization, Pregnancy
This is the first Knausgaard book I've read and my word. He is amazing at talking about nothing; to the degree that I constantly found myself lost in his writing and in love with the imagery. This is the first book in awhile that when I picked it up, I didn't want to put it down.