Karellen > Recent Status Updates

Amazing to think it’s her first novel. Although she’s written a couple of other decent essays. Fitzcarraldo keeps them coming, these breakthrough authors. These unusual and unique writers. Brilliant

For some reason this reminds me stylistically of another novel I abandoned years ago. But I’m sticking with this one. Heaven knows why. It’s pretty tedious stuff.

Hugely original but somehow infuriating. No idea why. She’s one of our best new writers. And this is well observed. It’s uncannily accurate. I mean having lived the London life. With an older partner too. It’s not exactly the same but I can empathise with the narrator. Apart from the Irish angle.
Now I wish it would go somewhere.

Here we go again. I’m struggling once more. Still almost 300 pages to go and floundering. Claustrophobic, ingenious prose, makes this an intense read. We’ve met these characters before but somehow it’s different. Not enjoying it yet as much I expected to. Sadly. ☹️

Amusing satire on contemporary society. Brief but hilarious

Don’t get me wrong- it’s not all bad. But why does one have to endure so much trivial crap to experience the clarity of the interesting passages? It’s almost schizophrenic. Maybe the author was pissed when he wrote the best parts? It’s a strange conundrum for me.

The title is My Struggle. But actually the struggle is that of the reader wading through pages of dross to find the interesting bits. Anyone that enjoys this kind of thing is a fucking masochist!

I seem to have been reading this for what seems like eternity but there are still 150 pages left. It’s like Proust for the 21st century. Ridiculous amounts of unnecessary detail. But having somehow got this far I’m determined to finish the beast. Just so bored of it though.

If there’s one thing I hate it’s when books are translated into American I stead of English and you get stupidly incorrect language- I mean what the hell is “impetuousness”? Should be impetuosity. Irritating. Never mind, I suppose we’ll all be American before long. Hopefully I’ll be dead before that happens. Ugh.

“I wish I’d never given you books. Now all you do is sit there reading and writing. You’ve become so bourgeois”
Hilarious. It’s pretty much what a man once said to me when I was about the same age as the narrator of this tale. And he too was supposedly older and wiser. Except he wasn’t.
Of course I am bourgeois. He was right about that.

Hilarious writing. It occurs to me that the fascist element will be unhappy though. The author was born in China but qualifies one of Granta’s best British novelists.

Well I have to say that some people tried to put me off reading this guy which is why I only just got around to it. In fact I downloaded it very cheaply just to see what I felt. Now I’m already hooked. And the problem is this is the 1st of 6 books in the saga entitled My Struggle. I suppose I knew this would happen, given my relationship with Nordic writers.

Almost finished the trilogy now, but the final chapters are making me feel sad, for the terrible ordeal that this writer endured to inspire this work. It’s only now, fifty years after her suicide, that I’m discovering her talent. Indeed she had died before I was even born.

Part 2 of Dependency. This lady certainly lived an eventful life.

Finished reading “Youth” (book 2 of the trilogy). Absolutely enthralling. This writer is enchanting and it’s strange how one can fall in love with someone whom you never met that died fifty years ago, before I was even born. Strange but wonderful. An inspiration. The best book I’ve read for ages. 😎

The end of Childhood. Now for the 2nd novel in this wonderful trilogy, entitled simply Youth. An absolute classic.