Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2014
432 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A family of four - mother, father and two boys - move to the South Coast of Norway to a new house on a newly developed site. It is the early 1970s and the family's trajectory, upwardly mobile: the future seems limitless. In painstaking, sometimes self-lacerating detail, Knausgaard paints a world familiar to anyone who can recall the intensity and novelty of childhood experience, one in which children and adults lead parallel lives that never meet. Perhaps the most Proustian in the series, Book Three gives us Knausgaard's vivid, technicolor recollections of childhood, his emerging self-understanding, and the multilayered nature of time's passing, memory, and existence.
"Of course, I remember nothing from this time. It is completely impossible to identify with the infant my parents photographed; this is in fact so difficult it almost seems wrong to use the word 'I' when referring to it, lying in the baby bath, for instance, its skin unnaturally red, its arms and legs sprawling, and its face distorted in a scream no one remembers the reason for anymore ... Is that creature the same as the one sitting here in Malmö, writing this?"
- from Book Three of My Struggle
"Starred Review. Candor and fearlessness are the hallmarks of the books: Knausgaard will share anything, not for shock value or self-indulgence, but to show that plainspoken honesty gets to the heart of the human condition. Halfway through, this series is starting to look like an early-21st-century masterpiece." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. This segment of a genre-defying and unusual novel will leave readers hungry for the following installments, and serves as a fine entry point into the series. " -Publishers Weekly
"A superbly told childhood story ... Knausgaard writes about everyday life as a child with a flow and continuity that all hangs together ... the text has a gravitational pull that draws the reader in only further." - Dag Og Tid (Norway)
"An aesthetic pleasure... A patient, chiseled, and intense portrayal of a child's sensory experience. Book Three is a classic." - Klassekampen (Norway)
"Compelling reading... Knausgaard has an equally good eye for small and large events." - Aftenposten (Norway)
"A gripping novel ... This childhood portrayal drifts off with a lightness and sensitivity that not many will associate with him ... There is no doubt that the series is worth following the author all the way." - Dagens Næringsliv (Norway)
"The man can write a novel about a solid, pretty traditional upbringing too ... A sensitive, sharp depiction of growing up in the 70s." - Adresseavisen (Norway)
This information about My Struggle was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Karl Ove Knausgaard was born in Norway in 1968. His debut novel Out of This World won the Norwegian Critics Prize in 2004 and his A Time for Everything (Archipelago) was a finalist for the Nordic Council Prize. For My Struggle, Knausgaard received the Brage Award in 2009 (for Book One), the 2010 Book of the Year Prize in Morgenbladet, and the P2 Listeners' Prize. It is also a finalist for The Believer Fiction Prize. My Struggle has been translated into more than fifiteen languages. Knausgaard lives in Sweden with his wife and three children.
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