I read the whole of My Struggle and loved it. Frequently hilarious, beautifully written, but I came out of it not sure how his fiction would read in comparison (could a guy this neurotic and weird write speculative fiction well? Wouldn’t his specific neuroses just come up repeatedly in the text anyways?) Yes, they do, and yes, it’s still great!

If you’ve read My Struggle you’ll recognize several events from his life showing up again in his fiction. The discussion of the laws of nature and Wolfram he has with the other parent at the daycare shows up through Egil, there’s a character that experiences the same very funny trials and tribulations at a hospital for the mentally ill, etc. In MS Knausgaard discusses this quite a bit, mixing up things from a personal life into his fiction, and sometimes forgetting where the line is drawn.

The one thing I didn’t like, or thought was maybe half baked, was his attempts at writing in multiple narrative voices. Knausgaard’s strong voice makes MS great. Here, when he attempts to write as a 16 year old girl, it just sounds kind of silly. He attempts to distinguish these characters by their media choices (the 16 year old girl listens to Billie Eilish, the 19 year old boy listens to Songs: Ohia [called Ohia in the text?]), but they all write and think just like Knausgaard. I’m not asking for Benjy, just a little bit more distinguishing characteristics than “I put Billie Eilish on my Spotify.” Maybe this is a translation thing and they use different types of Norwegian? The strongest portions were Egil and the Journalist’s sections. I love the essay about death at the end. I recommend!