You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by admacg
Min kamp 6 by Karl Ove Knausgård
4.0
Karl Ove Knausgaard has been a constant companion since I started the first volume, back in 2018. And now, here in the midst of uncertain 2020, having started this book at the beginning of lockdown, I've finally reached the end of volume 6. And I'm sad to see him go.
To begin with, the first part of the book concerns the reaction of his family, in particular that of his uncle, to the previous volumes. It then moves into a 400 page discussion of Hitler, in particular his time in Vienna, before he looks at the writing of Mein Kampf (with title of min kamp, this wasn't a surprising diversion) before ending with a touching and emotional description of his wife experiencing a severe depressive episode. In between there are lots of trips to the kindergarten with the children, lots of coffee drank and cigarettes smoked on the balcony.
After I've finished a volume, I'm never sure what I've just read, and how i feel about it. And this is no different. I did find the Hitler diversion a bit of a trial at times, and I'm not 100% sure about the point of it. But for the rest of the time, I found his writing style riveting, in how he can make the mundane so fascinating, and how he can be so honest with how he feels about his life and those around him.
There's a fair amount of detail about what he was hoping to acheive with these volumes, a sense that he had to be free to write these things, and had to be inconsiderate to others to do so. He acknowledges that he has hurt those closest to him, and it will be painful for his children to read in later years. At one stage he describes the enterprise as 'two sons who bury their dead father and a frustrated father of small children who strips himself naked for the reader' but it's much more than that. Sometimes frustrating, always engrossing, I've never read anything quite like this.
To begin with, the first part of the book concerns the reaction of his family, in particular that of his uncle, to the previous volumes. It then moves into a 400 page discussion of Hitler, in particular his time in Vienna, before he looks at the writing of Mein Kampf (with title of min kamp, this wasn't a surprising diversion) before ending with a touching and emotional description of his wife experiencing a severe depressive episode. In between there are lots of trips to the kindergarten with the children, lots of coffee drank and cigarettes smoked on the balcony.
After I've finished a volume, I'm never sure what I've just read, and how i feel about it. And this is no different. I did find the Hitler diversion a bit of a trial at times, and I'm not 100% sure about the point of it. But for the rest of the time, I found his writing style riveting, in how he can make the mundane so fascinating, and how he can be so honest with how he feels about his life and those around him.
There's a fair amount of detail about what he was hoping to acheive with these volumes, a sense that he had to be free to write these things, and had to be inconsiderate to others to do so. He acknowledges that he has hurt those closest to him, and it will be painful for his children to read in later years. At one stage he describes the enterprise as 'two sons who bury their dead father and a frustrated father of small children who strips himself naked for the reader' but it's much more than that. Sometimes frustrating, always engrossing, I've never read anything quite like this.