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A review by guts_
My Struggle, Book Four by Karl Ove Knausgård
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Book 4 of the My Struggle series is where Karl Ove Knausgard arguably struggles the most, apart from the death of his father in the first book. On his own for the first time, eighteen year old Karl Ove begins teaching in a small fishing village in northern Norway while trying to establish himself as a writer and of course, lose his virginity. We accompany him through his drunken triumphs where the world is beautiful and anything is possible, to his lowest, most shameful, and humiliating failures with women and letting down and being let down by friends and family. Keeping in line with the previous entries in the series, this is a portrait of the life of a deeply complicated yet ordinary and sincere man laid bare. Much like the small town of Hafjord where the sun disappears for months at a time and there is seemingly nothing to do but drink yourself into oblivion; there is not much happening in the My Struggle books, only life, sometimes raw and ugly, sometimes indescribably beautiful, tender, and human. If you stop and look for the beauty in everyday life, it will find you. Knausgard, like any great artist, reveals what is already there, offering you the chance to see with new eyes and it can change you if you let it.
"While I washed my hands I stared at my reflection in the mirror. The singular feeling that arose when you looked at your own eyes, which so purely and unambiguously expressed your inner state, of being both inside and outside, filled me to the hilt for a few intense seconds, but was forgotten the moment I left the room, in the same way that a towel on a hook or a bar of soap in the small hollow in the sink also were, all these trivialities that have no existence beyond the moment, but hang or lie undisturbed in dark, empty rooms until the door is opened the next time and another person grasps the soap, dries his hands on the towel, and examines his soul in the mirror."
"While I washed my hands I stared at my reflection in the mirror. The singular feeling that arose when you looked at your own eyes, which so purely and unambiguously expressed your inner state, of being both inside and outside, filled me to the hilt for a few intense seconds, but was forgotten the moment I left the room, in the same way that a towel on a hook or a bar of soap in the small hollow in the sink also were, all these trivialities that have no existence beyond the moment, but hang or lie undisturbed in dark, empty rooms until the door is opened the next time and another person grasps the soap, dries his hands on the towel, and examines his soul in the mirror."