Dancing in the Dark by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Harvill Secker, £17.99)
The fourth volume of Norwegian sensation Karl Ove Knausgaard’s fictionalised memoir won’t disappoint his many readers. Thus far, in the “My Struggle” cycle, we’ve seen our anti-hero grow up doing all the things young boys do—while also having to negotiate an overbearing father.
In this book, Dancing in the Dark, he feels ambivalent when he starts his own family and witnesses the awful yet liberating death of his father. He is a music-obsessed virgin determined to become a writer. He takes a job in northern Norway teaching students barely younger than himself, and tries to balance the irritations of responsibility with the new-found freedoms of living away from home. Employing the same structural methods used in the first three volumes, Knausgaard avoids linear chronology to give us a narrative showcasing a cross-section of life being lived outside of any temporal framework. Many readers have struggled to put their finger on what is so unique about Knausgaard’s method—about why, and how, his depiction of everyday life feels so original.
That mystery makes up much of the novel’s magic. It’s essential reading for Knausgaard fans, as well as anyone curious about what is the most ambitious and emotionally rewarding literary project of this century.
The fourth volume of Norwegian sensation Karl Ove Knausgaard’s fictionalised memoir won’t disappoint his many readers. Thus far, in the “My Struggle” cycle, we’ve seen our anti-hero grow up doing all the things young boys do—while also having to negotiate an overbearing father.
In this book, Dancing in the Dark, he feels ambivalent when he starts his own family and witnesses the awful yet liberating death of his father. He is a music-obsessed virgin determined to become a writer. He takes a job in northern Norway teaching students barely younger than himself, and tries to balance the irritations of responsibility with the new-found freedoms of living away from home. Employing the same structural methods used in the first three volumes, Knausgaard avoids linear chronology to give us a narrative showcasing a cross-section of life being lived outside of any temporal framework. Many readers have struggled to put their finger on what is so unique about Knausgaard’s method—about why, and how, his depiction of everyday life feels so original.
That mystery makes up much of the novel’s magic. It’s essential reading for Knausgaard fans, as well as anyone curious about what is the most ambitious and emotionally rewarding literary project of this century.
