“My Struggle – Book Two” by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Finished on 12th of September 2016.

Review:

A second instalment of the six volumes epic. The first volume was a revelation and kept me entranced by its style and contents. The second one, focused on Karl Ove’s second marriage and his three children with Linda. I love his style – is so much Proust like, only better, more modern and relevant to our age. 
However, as with most of the great literature it requires reader’s attention and time. At some parts, especially when he was going through some minute detailed descriptions of what had happened at the various children parties I was asking myself whether I really needed to know all those details. 
He has an amazing ability to stretch or compact the time. Some events are related with the absolutely minute details; it feels like every passing second is covered, whilst with the others he can cover a span of years in a single paragraph.

Inspect the whole Fiction and Literature Section -->

Memorable quotes:

“How quickly a life sets new roots. How quickly you move from being a stranger in a town to being absorbed into it. Three years ago, I had been living in Bergen, at that time I knew nothing about Stockholm and knew no one there. Then I went to Stockholm, the unknown, populated by foreigners, and gradually, day by day, though imperceptibly, I began to thread my life into theirs until now they were inseparable. If I had gone to London, which I easily could have done, the same would have happened there, just with different people. It was that arbitrary, and so momentous.”

On his visit to Tromoya:
“There was nothing. But lives were still being lived in these houses, and they were still everything for the people inside. People were born, people died, they made love and argued, ate and shat, drank and partied, read and slept. Watched TV, dreamt, ate an apple gazing across rooftops, autumn winds shaking the tall, slim pine trees.”