Book Summary and Reviews of The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard

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Janine_S

What happens when you get too much
This author has intrigued me for sometime but l've never read anything by him until now. As I learned when I finished, this is the fourth book in The Morning Star series which to date has six books. However, not knowing this before I began, I would note you can read this as a stand alone.

This book is a long suicide note by the character Kristian Hadeland who appears in other books in the Morning Star series. Kristian is a most unlikable character as you soon learn. He starts his tale in the 1980s when he was in London studying photography.

He comes from Norway at 20 with a narcissistic belief in his talent and character. But things aren't going so well for him when he meets the enigmatic Hans, and Vivian who is staging Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. These two become pillars of opposition in his contentious life. Things spiral when Kristian goes home for Christmas and hears his parents say disparaging things about hum. He leaves without a word goodbye and plunges himself into attempts to prove his artistic uniqueness when he chances upon a homeless man and his life changes from near ruin to glory.

The Faustus subplot reveals itself when Kristian is helped by Hans and upon this help he is moves on a trajectory toward greatness. However twenty-four years later, Kristian's life starts to unravel. In Dr. Faustus, Faustus asked Mephistopheles why he left hell to which the answer he didn't. And indeed, that is the core around this novel merges. What world do we live him? This is a character driven novel and driven by a really awful character. Kristian is so self-absorbed (in deed his father's description of him being a black hole is spot on - he destroys even when he thinks his creations are making the world better). The book's jacket is perhaps the best illustration of this - a winter road on which the tire tracks swivel all around in no clear direction. Kristian is a mess of a person.

Knausgird's popularity I'm told is his relatability - his characters resonate with us because their struggles are like our own. In this book Kristian for me was someone I wouldn't want to be or know. And maybe that's a good thing because most books don't show the main character as one so unattractive. I admit never having read any of Knausgärd's book or any in this series and am probably missing something but I crazily did enjoy this book - in spite of Kristian!

I would like to thank NetGalley and Penguin Press for allowing me to read this ARC.