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A Free Digital Download from Boyhood Island, third instalment in the international sensation, My Struggle
Childhood is exhilarating and terrifying. For the young Karl Ove, new houses, classes and friends are met with manic excitement and creeping dread. Adults occupy godlike positions of power, benevolent in the case of his doting mother, tyrannical in the case of his cruel father.
In this passage, Karl Ove is desperately looking forward to attending his swimming course with his classmates. That is, until his mother forgets to buy him the mandatory swimming cap ahead of time.
In the now infamously direct style of the My Struggle cycle, Knausgaard describes a time in which victories and defeats are felt keenly and every attempt at self-definition is frustrated.
Childhood is exhilarating and terrifying. For the young Karl Ove, new houses, classes and friends are met with manic excitement and creeping dread. Adults occupy godlike positions of power, benevolent in the case of his doting mother, tyrannical in the case of his cruel father.
In this passage, Karl Ove is desperately looking forward to attending his swimming course with his classmates. That is, until his mother forgets to buy him the mandatory swimming cap ahead of time.
In the now infamously direct style of the My Struggle cycle, Knausgaard describes a time in which victories and defeats are felt keenly and every attempt at self-definition is frustrated.
- GenresFiction
Kindle Edition
Published March 8, 2014
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About the author
Karl Ove Knausgård
76 books7,443 followersNominated to the 2004 Nordic Council’s Literature Prize & awarded the 2004 Norwegian Critics’ Prize.
Karl Ove Knausgård (b. 1968) made his literary debut in 1998 with the widely acclaimed novel Out of the World, which was a great critical and commercial success and won him, as the first debut novel ever, The Norwegian Critics' Prize. He then went on to write six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle (Min Kamp), which have become a publication phenomenon in his native Norway as well as the world over.
Karl Ove Knausgård (b. 1968) made his literary debut in 1998 with the widely acclaimed novel Out of the World, which was a great critical and commercial success and won him, as the first debut novel ever, The Norwegian Critics' Prize. He then went on to write six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle (Min Kamp), which have become a publication phenomenon in his native Norway as well as the world over.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 9, 2016
I had actually decided not to read another part of the Knausgaard saga, but it just so happened that I grabbed that book from the shelf.
I had found the second part a bit too self absorbed for my liking, in a way that could not rise higher into something I could relate to. At times I struggled through it.
Not the case with this one, though. This is written in a much more informal manner, the way a trip down boyhood memory lane should be. Knausgaard conveys all the agonies of childhood, the smells, the images, the emotions of a time when everything could make or break you, when everything was up to be discovered. At the same time, we learn about his father and how he has affected him as a presence and character since he was a young boy. This is more than physical or psychological abuse – he shows how this terrorizing that completely unexpected at any given time can reverberate into adulthood. He also discusses his relationship with his mother, that he clearly adores, but it’s not certain if he forgives for how she seemed indifferent and not involved at all when the father became violent and abusive.
The way he talks about exploring pubescent sexuality is also very interesting – sometimes funny, others blunt, mostly awkward, as it very well might be at that age.
A lot can be said about this saga, which is indeed a struggle, pretty much everyone’s struggle to get through life, regardless of where we started.
Knausgaard is a gifted narrator, for me at his best when he manages to make his life extend and reach our own experiences and memories. This is such an instance, when while reading, your own childhood comes flashing back (stealing your brother’s magazines, going to the beach with your friends, thinking the summer will never end).
I had found the second part a bit too self absorbed for my liking, in a way that could not rise higher into something I could relate to. At times I struggled through it.
Not the case with this one, though. This is written in a much more informal manner, the way a trip down boyhood memory lane should be. Knausgaard conveys all the agonies of childhood, the smells, the images, the emotions of a time when everything could make or break you, when everything was up to be discovered. At the same time, we learn about his father and how he has affected him as a presence and character since he was a young boy. This is more than physical or psychological abuse – he shows how this terrorizing that completely unexpected at any given time can reverberate into adulthood. He also discusses his relationship with his mother, that he clearly adores, but it’s not certain if he forgives for how she seemed indifferent and not involved at all when the father became violent and abusive.
The way he talks about exploring pubescent sexuality is also very interesting – sometimes funny, others blunt, mostly awkward, as it very well might be at that age.
A lot can be said about this saga, which is indeed a struggle, pretty much everyone’s struggle to get through life, regardless of where we started.
Knausgaard is a gifted narrator, for me at his best when he manages to make his life extend and reach our own experiences and memories. This is such an instance, when while reading, your own childhood comes flashing back (stealing your brother’s magazines, going to the beach with your friends, thinking the summer will never end).
June 14, 2014
I have just finished reading the hardback book Boyhood Island My Struggle 3. I thought it was superb from start to finish. I very highly recommend reading the hardback book to all readers.
Boyhood Island is an autobiographical story of Karl Ove from childhood with his family. This is Karl Ove Knausgaard third phenomenally successful acclaimed series of six books titled My Struggle.
This breath-taking novel series has been the biggest cultural sensation in Norway briefly out selling the Bible.
A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard is the first book in My Struggle series.
In Boyhood Island we see Karl Ove who lives with bad temperted father that he hates and his mother he loves very much and with his brother. I felt very sorry for Karl Ove as his father seems to never believe Karl Ove and he only shouts and hits Karl Ove when his mother is out. As karl Ove grows up he starts school with having friends of his own. Karl and his friends love playing football and getting up to mischief in the wooded areas near were they live. Review by ireadnovels.wordpress.com
Boyhood Island is an autobiographical story of Karl Ove from childhood with his family. This is Karl Ove Knausgaard third phenomenally successful acclaimed series of six books titled My Struggle.
This breath-taking novel series has been the biggest cultural sensation in Norway briefly out selling the Bible.
A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard is the first book in My Struggle series.
In Boyhood Island we see Karl Ove who lives with bad temperted father that he hates and his mother he loves very much and with his brother. I felt very sorry for Karl Ove as his father seems to never believe Karl Ove and he only shouts and hits Karl Ove when his mother is out. As karl Ove grows up he starts school with having friends of his own. Karl and his friends love playing football and getting up to mischief in the wooded areas near were they live. Review by ireadnovels.wordpress.com
August 23, 2016
Astonishing account of childhood. People call Knausgaard the Norwegian Proust, but in fact they are undertaking quite different narrative experiments. Proust is intent on transforming the material of memory, turning it into a magical text, a weave through which we may perceive our own childhood indistinctly.
Knausgaard insistently performs 'perfect recall', which we realise as we read cannot possibly be completely accurate, for the simple reason that the human memory cannot recall 'everything'. When he ends 'Little did I know then that every detail of this landscape and every single person living in it, would for ever be lodged in my memory with a ring as true as perfect pitch' (p. 490), it functions with the same aching nostalgia as does Proust's madeleine or Japanese flowers, that open in water as involuntary memory opens if triggered through sensory impressions – but the main difference is that Knausgaard writes in the mode of metonymy, and Proust in the mode of metaphor. Knausgaard's favourite stylistic device is the detailed list, building an image by metonymic association, and building the impression of factual accuracy. Proust concentrates affect into apparently irrelevant concrete objects – granting them metaphorical power, and containing whole epochs of time into them, lie trapping a genie in a bottle. He thus manages to suggest the passing of time, and its simultaneous circularity through metaphor, where Knausgaard makes no secret of writing a chronological, linear account of his time on the island of Tromøya in the 1970s.
Where there is some connection between the two writers' narrative theory is that Knausgaard seems to eschew the editor, and welcome the idea of overlapping and dovetailing narrative sections, the building of a story through different perspectives. We have endless apparent repetitions of the young boy wandering in the forest that surrounds his childhood estate, endless descriptions of trees, snow, the rubbish dump, the Fina station – and yet these repetitions have a gradual underlying momentum that is carrying us through time, acting as the foundation on which he grows. Proust does exactly the same.
One final absolute difference is in the presentation of the family romance: Proust never explicitly says that his father disliked or was disappointed in him, or was violent and abusive towards him. Knausgaard pulls no punches at all, and expresses directly on the page his hatred of his father, and his father's bullying. He does not care whether we believe him, or judge him for it, he does not care about veiling the relationship in style. Proust manages, through a tiny handful of scenes early in A la recherche, to insinuate that his father is distant and disapproving of the narrator's intention of becoming a writer, without ever betraying or condemning him. Proust cared very, very much that no-one should be biographically revealed in his novel, even though the enterprise is explicitly autobiographical – his great realisation is to write about what he knows, rather than try to 'write Literature', and he has inspired a century of writers to do the same. Knausgaard sticks too fingers up at social approval, narrative discretion and any form of transformation when conveying his father. He seems to say that there is no possibility of translating an abusive father into any other form than what he is – the simple, terse description of his actions is enough.
It is this terseness about the representation of reality, which we also see in Houellebecq – although the latter's penchant for porn and terrorism is somewhat less edifying – that marks Knausgaard out as a postmodern writer, affiliated with Proust and yet moving on from his narrative experiment.
There is no question that Knausgaard is a brilliant writer. What I want to know is where narrative fiction will move as a result of his contribution.
Knausgaard insistently performs 'perfect recall', which we realise as we read cannot possibly be completely accurate, for the simple reason that the human memory cannot recall 'everything'. When he ends 'Little did I know then that every detail of this landscape and every single person living in it, would for ever be lodged in my memory with a ring as true as perfect pitch' (p. 490), it functions with the same aching nostalgia as does Proust's madeleine or Japanese flowers, that open in water as involuntary memory opens if triggered through sensory impressions – but the main difference is that Knausgaard writes in the mode of metonymy, and Proust in the mode of metaphor. Knausgaard's favourite stylistic device is the detailed list, building an image by metonymic association, and building the impression of factual accuracy. Proust concentrates affect into apparently irrelevant concrete objects – granting them metaphorical power, and containing whole epochs of time into them, lie trapping a genie in a bottle. He thus manages to suggest the passing of time, and its simultaneous circularity through metaphor, where Knausgaard makes no secret of writing a chronological, linear account of his time on the island of Tromøya in the 1970s.
Where there is some connection between the two writers' narrative theory is that Knausgaard seems to eschew the editor, and welcome the idea of overlapping and dovetailing narrative sections, the building of a story through different perspectives. We have endless apparent repetitions of the young boy wandering in the forest that surrounds his childhood estate, endless descriptions of trees, snow, the rubbish dump, the Fina station – and yet these repetitions have a gradual underlying momentum that is carrying us through time, acting as the foundation on which he grows. Proust does exactly the same.
One final absolute difference is in the presentation of the family romance: Proust never explicitly says that his father disliked or was disappointed in him, or was violent and abusive towards him. Knausgaard pulls no punches at all, and expresses directly on the page his hatred of his father, and his father's bullying. He does not care whether we believe him, or judge him for it, he does not care about veiling the relationship in style. Proust manages, through a tiny handful of scenes early in A la recherche, to insinuate that his father is distant and disapproving of the narrator's intention of becoming a writer, without ever betraying or condemning him. Proust cared very, very much that no-one should be biographically revealed in his novel, even though the enterprise is explicitly autobiographical – his great realisation is to write about what he knows, rather than try to 'write Literature', and he has inspired a century of writers to do the same. Knausgaard sticks too fingers up at social approval, narrative discretion and any form of transformation when conveying his father. He seems to say that there is no possibility of translating an abusive father into any other form than what he is – the simple, terse description of his actions is enough.
It is this terseness about the representation of reality, which we also see in Houellebecq – although the latter's penchant for porn and terrorism is somewhat less edifying – that marks Knausgaard out as a postmodern writer, affiliated with Proust and yet moving on from his narrative experiment.
There is no question that Knausgaard is a brilliant writer. What I want to know is where narrative fiction will move as a result of his contribution.
December 12, 2014
excellent slog of a read. fascinating view of island youth and family. recommended reading for anyone who enjoyed his earlier works and for those raised on an island during the sixties and seventies. coulda been tasmania...
July 13, 2018
Part of The Struggle series, very well written when he was a boy growing up on the island. His father was a teacher but exceptionally hard on the children. His fear from his dad is extraordinary but he loved his mum. A good read.
May 23, 2015
Fascinating
July 19, 2015
A preteen boy spends his childhood years in a Norwegian island community, terrorized by an abusive father who is drifting away from the family and into alcoholism. The story is at once both bucolic and terrifying; a coming of age story in the best and worst of ways. This is the third of Knausgård's six part epic, broadly titled "My Struggle", thought by some to parallel Proust's six novels that made up "In Search of Time Lost".
September 19, 2016
Not as good as the previous ones and even quite boring at times, the story becomes more engrossing as it progresses to his transition to teenager. His relationship with his parents is interesting and the book casts a light on his future years (and the previous books)
June 24, 2018
I was so excited to pick this up having read the first two volumes. Unfortunately, this one is plain boring. Every now and then I’d find his childhood memories relatable, but overall the prose is boring. Onto vol. 4...
September 3, 2014
Enjoyed this but there is some overlap with a later book that I enjoyed much more as I rea that one first. I hope more of his work is translated.
August 27, 2016
completely enchanting and better edited. clearly fills gaps in book 1 and 2. took me back to junior high in an instant. teenage trauma is is the core of all adult memory.
November 23, 2017
Close to perfect writing: embodied, evocative and just great vignettes with the ever present slow burn of childhood
February 12, 2018
Karl Ove will make you rethink language. Read him with your lover. Read him out loud. Read him all winter long.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews