Book Good

I just finished Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle over the weekend and I am still trying to process it, but I can say that it is one of the more affecting and resonant books I’ve read in quite some time. The first of six volumes, My Struggle — called A Death in the Family in Britain and To Die in Germany — is “at the center of a debate about literary ethics” and the whole fiction vs. memoir thing, but what’s so striking about the book is the terrifying emotional frankness with which Knausgaard confronts his own history. Literary critic Toril Moi describes it as “expressing embarrassment and shame in a male mode,” and I suppose that’s pretty close to it. As a white guy who basically runs on a steady diet of embarrassment and shame it certainly spoke to me. Apparently being a teenager in Norway is about the same as being a teenager in suburban America, except there’s more fish-eating and waiting around for buses. Anyway, it’s probably not for everyone, but if you think it’s the kind of thing that will appeal to you don’t get discouraged by the debate or the Norwayness; focus on the sad humiliations of being human.