Karellen > Recent Status Updates

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.

Now halfway through “Childhood”, the first book in this amazing trilogy.

“Childhood is long and narrow and you can’t get out of it on your own”
Beginning of ch 6. Remarkable book. For some inexplicable reasons the trilogy wasn’t published in English until 2019. How many more geniuses are waiting to be discovered?

“Down in the bottom of my childhood my father stands laughing”
This sentence begins ch 2 of this narrative.

Amazing. Just as I started reading this brilliant novel has been longlisted for the Booker Int. Just as her first novel was (The Employees). This one is so different to that one, both highly original. Love her writing. Good luck to Olga.

Just what is going on in Denmark? Yet another ridiculously good novel from another Danish author. Not just brilliant but utterly different and superbly written. Intriguing.

Finally the writer reveals the source of the title of this literary trilogy, in a scene of intensely imagined genius. Spellbinding…..

“Maybe in the heart of this book there is nothing other than howling, yellow, blinding apocalyptic howling….”

“The guy fights like three or four at once”
Oh no. Sorry that isn’t English. It’s been translated into American. Hugely disappointing.

“I do not think you will find many books with as an intense and vivid vision as Cărtărescu gives us in this book - one of the major works of the late 20th century” according to the modern novel.org
I’m not going to argue. Just a shame that vol 2&3 of the trilogy are not available in English yet ☹️

End of part 1. Utterly brilliant. On another level than most of the banal tripe that passes for literature. The author is a genius who should be more widely known. Hopefully if more books are translated? I believe that his latest one is being released later this year.

“With tears in my eyes I remember thirty years. I am not in my right mind. A loneliness murmurs in my ears, desperate and soothing at the same time…”
The incredible story continues.

“The past is everything, the future nothing, and time has no other meaning. We live on a piece of plaque in the multiple sclerosis of the universe.”
Surreal and bizarre in equal measure, this intense novel plays havoc with the imagination. An overwhelming sense of the fantastic.

This one is a huge beast of a novel, and yet only the first part of a trilogy, of which only The Left Wing has thus been translated. It’s quite a challenging read so far, but that’s ok.

Only on the first chapter and already I’m checking the dictionary. This writer is addictive. Shame that only a few of his novels have been translated thus far.