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    My Struggle, Book 1
    My Struggle, Book 1
    My Struggle, Book 1
    Audiobook16 hours

    My Struggle, Book 1

    Written by Karl Ove Knausgaard

    Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    My Struggle: Book One introduces American readers to the audacious, addictive, and profoundly surprising international literary sensation that is the provocative and brilliant six-volume autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It has already been anointed a Proustian masterpiece and is the rare work of dazzling literary originality that is intensely, irresistibly readable. Unafraid of the big issues-death, love, art, fear-and yet committed to the intimate details of life as it is lived, My Struggle is an essential work of contemporary literature.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 23, 2015
    ISBN9781490650180
    My Struggle, Book 1
    Author

    Karl Ove Knausgaard

    Karl Ove Knausgaard was born in Norway in 1968. My Struggle has won countless international literary awards and has been translated into at least fifteen languages. Knausgaard lives in Sweden with his wife and four children.

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    Reviews for My Struggle, Book 1

    4.5/5

    49 ratings14 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Dieses Buch ist wirklich erstaunlich, da muss ich all den begeisterten Stimmen Recht geben. Egal, ob man den Autor nun als Person gut finden kann oder nicht, sein Buch ist tatsächlich ein außergewöhnliches Leseerlebnis.Knausgard beschreibt, wie er und sein Bruder nach dem Tod seines Vaters das verwahrloste Haus, in dem er mit der Großmutter gelebt hat, ausräumen. Der Autor beschreibt seine Jugend im Norwegen der 1980er Jahre, er beschreibt sein jetziges Leben als Vater in Schweden, immer begleitet vom Wunsch, ungewöhnlich zu leben. Das Besondere ist die erstaunliche Komposition, die lange Rückblenden und minutiöse Beschreibungen verknüpft, aber dennoch nicht langatmig wird. Tatsächlich habe ich in letzter Zeit kaum ein Buch so genau gelesen, und das, obwohl ich bei Beschreibungen zum Querlesen neige - aber nicht hier. Es gelingt ihm zudem, Identifikation zu erreichen. Da wir gleich alt sind, haben wir viel ähnliches erlebt. Es gelingt Knausgard ganz erstaunlich gut, einzelne Episoden auszubauen und in diesen dahinterliegende Lebensabschnitte zu verdichten. So beschreibt er das Silvester 1984. Er ist nirgends eingeladen, möchte aber auch zu keiner uncoolen Party gehen und schmiedet einen Plan, wie er und sein Freund zu einer coolen Party kommen können. Das misslingt. Was hier eher komisch klingt, ist durch Knausgards Erzähltechnik eine exzellente Darstellung der Gefühlslage eines Fünfzehnjährigen, die nichts Lächerliches hat. Für mich, die ich 1985 ebenfalls eine Irrfahrt durch die Silvesternacht auf der Suche nach einer coolen Party erlebt habe, die ebenfalls nicht lustig, aber sehr prägend war, war dieser Erzählstrang sehr authentisch.Und so ist es eigentlich mit allem: Er beschreibt detailliert und schonungslos offen, dabei aber dennoch so kunstvoll, dass es eben keine Tagebuchprosa ist, sondern hohe Literatur, die im Banalen das Überdauernde findet und durch die genaue Beobachtung das Alltägliche dem Gewöhnlichen enthebt. Immer wieder finden sich wunderbare Sätze, so auch am Ende: "Und der Tod, den ich stets als die wichtigste Größe im Leben betrachtet hatte, dunkel, anziehend, war nicht mehr als ein Rohr, das platzt, ein Ast, der im Wind bricht, eine Jacke, die von einem Kleiderbügel rutscht und zu Boden fällt."
    • 4/5
      An intimate memoir written in the style of the most engaging fiction. Like Proust, but more visceral and immediate, Knausgaard keeps the reader utterly riveted in his extreme close-up descriptions of moments long past and the characters they contained. At times it seems as though his material is the commonplace, it is in fact the universal.
    • 4/5
      The strength of this book, in my eyes, is the way it makes the readers nostalgic for their own childhood. It made me at least think back of my teenage years (the first part that is). What I didn't like was the lack of subtlety, especially in the second part of the book. The author seems to try to force compassion with the reader, and I'm allergic to that. If I am moved by literature, it's mostly because of the things the author implies. Knausgard chooses to be extremely explicit in his emotions.I also was annoyed by some of his philosophical sidesteps. they were trivial and full of clichés.
    • 4/5
      "The days from which these incidents are drawn were countless, the bonds they created between us indestructible",, August 23, 2014This review is from: My Struggle: Book 1 (Kindle Edition)This review is from: A Death in the Family: My Struggle Book 1 (Knausgaard) (Kindle Edition)An amazing read, but one that's hard to review. It's somewhere between a memoir and a work of literature: opening with the author recollecting his early childhood, with a father he fears (although we never really discover what causes such strong feelings); moving to the present day, where he describes marriage and children - love but boredom at much that this life entails . He describes his teenage years brilliantly: the huge effort of smuggling booze to a new year's party without his parents finding out; obsessive first love. And then midway through the book his father, who he hadn't seen for 18 months, dies an alcoholic, and as he spends time clearing up the house, he begins to realise how much he meant to him.Much of everyday life is described in excessive detail, yet somehow it doesn't bore - rather it makes you feel like you're there, watching all that happens. And in between, there are interesting, moving, highly relevant thoughts on life, art, nature, relationships.Looking forward to reading the sequels!
    • 3/5
      This book had some spectacular musings on death, and explorations of the ambivalent feelings of a son for his father, but I found nearly half the book a struggle to read. Too many scenes with little significance were described in excruciating detail. It didn't help that I found the author as a teenager rather unlikeable.
    • 5/5
      I find this writing absolutely fascinating.
    • 5/5
      04/17
      100% "This is an amazing book. So unsettling but in a mesmerizing sort of way. It is dreamlike but chock full of reality. I am afraid for my dreams that will come from this heartfelt and painfully serious work of the very first rank."

      04/14
      69.0% "All this bit about his father dying and the history behind it, the two brothers and their task at hand in cleaning up his mess, the funeral to come, all riveting and now the book is moving at a very good clip for me. Hard to put it down, though I do like to move slowly."
      04/13
      52.0% "Much better. This section is very very good. I guess I just like an older voice."
      04/12
      45.0% "Karl Ove has a wife now, an office, and a child on the way. Glad to have left his coming-of-age period."
      04/11
      38.0% "I am liking his take on being in love with somebody. Even if unrequited."
      04/09
      33.0% "Quite the confounding work here. An article by James Wood in The New Yorker from Aug of 2012 sheds great light on this novel. I couldn't agree more with him either."
      04/06
      24.0% "Still waiting for the beer hidden in the woods to get drunk. I think he hid it fifty pages ago." 2 comments
      04/05
      12.0% "I hit a snag in the "coming of age sexually". But I will get back to it."
      03/31
      8.0% "I loved the opening of this novel/memoir but not so much his teenage years. Not creative enough. Too much linear detail. I did this and then I did this and then I went and did this. But I am hopeful that the book gets going for me again soon."
    • 5/5
      A beautiful beautiful book. I loved it from the first chapter. Loved the Proust-like stream of consciousness going in and out of his childhood, looping back eventually to where he started in the present moment. Filled with detail and feeling and acute observation - loved it from beginning to end.
    • 4/5
      For me, this lived up to the positive critical reaction I've seen just about everywhere; if the commentary sounds to you like it describes the kind of literature you like to read, I doubt you'll be disappointed. I'm not sure how this will carry over another five volumes, or if I'm willing to be carried along that far, but I'm certainly up to giving it a shot.
    • 3/5
      Strange. I wanted to like this, because it is so well written. Echoes of Proust, Hemingway and Virginia Woolf. But it's a rambling affair. Partly this is its charm. It reads like streams of consciousness, and these are insightful and rewarding. And the streams divert into charming plot developments as we proceed from youth towards adulthood and the death in the family without ever reaching the funeral, which may have provided a natural denouement. All credit to the translator, Don Bartlett, who makes the book read like it was written first in English, apart from Norwegian place names and the occasional replacement, such as 'gymnas' for school, which remind the reader that we are in Norway, not Kansas.The book requires no effort to read, but it does ask for patience.
    • 5/5
      If you haven't heard of Karl Ove Knausgaard before, he is something of a national obsession in his native Norway on the back of this book and the subsequent 5 other volumes he has published about his life. He's looks like the bad boy of literature - all messed up hair and cigarettes, mad and faintly dangerous in a compelling sort of way. He rocks that homeless man crossed with Bob Geldof kind of look.I had read so much hype about this series of books I was almost afraid to start this hefty first volume in case it disappointed, but it was utterly captivating. I will not be able to do this book justice in whatever I review here, but I will have a go.It is a memoir written as a novel - no doubt with a fair bit of fictional padding, and indeed it's sold as a work of fiction - but it's so cleverly done. I haven't read Proust, but this series of work has been compared to it in just about every review I've read. He writes in very long paragraphs with no chapters and few obvious places to stop reading, and much of it is in stream of consciousness style. The first part of the book mainly reflects back on his childhood up to around the age of 16, particularly his relationship with his loving but mainly absent mum and his distant and difficult to please father. From time to time it skips back to present times, and in those parts Knausgaard does slip into arrogant self-obsessed philosophising and ruminating. I couldn't have read an entire book of this, but limited as it was his razor sharp observances were poignant and fascinating.On the surface there is nothing particularly fascinating in his childhood to support a main plot line, but Knausgaard is such a skilful writer you are totally drawn into the story, unable to stop turning the pages. He pays such attention to the most minor of details that you are sucked right into that town in Norway, getting cold feet in the snowy streets with him, sitting beside him in school, feeling the acute discomfort of sitting in the kitchen in silence with his father. The second part of the book focuses on the difficult few days in the immediate aftermath of his father's death (no spoiler - you're made aware that this is coming early on), returning to his home town to plan the funeral whilst trying to come to terms with the shocking level of self-destruction his dad's life had spiralled into. It is an acute account of the unexpected way in which his grief manifests itself, and again his observances are so pin sharp he touches every sense. I loved this book. It is a magnifying glass inside someone's head, and he touches the little things that resonate so strongly with all of us (many of which we'd rather not admit to). He has deliberately set out to write an acclaimed work of literature, and in places it runs away with itself (or rather he disappears too far inside his own mind), but mostly it's immensely readable.I will need a break before a delve into book 2 of the series, but I'm drawn to him and his life like a moth to the flame.
    • 4/5
      Hard to live up to all the billing it has received. Honest writing. Moments of bare and striking insight. Good read, but I doubt I will continue with next volume.
    • 5/5
      Sprachgewaltige Aufarbeitung der Kindheit und dem Sterben des Vaters von Knausgard, die Geschichte entwickelt einen unausweichlichen Sog bis zum Schluss. "Damals hielt ich mich für einen Menschenkenner. Das konnte ich, hatte ich mir damals eingebildet, darin war ich gut: andere zu verstehen. Während ich mir selbst eher ein Rätsel war. Oh, wie dumm!"
    • 5/5
      Knausgaard's project is to capture those moments that seem imbued with meaning beyond their contexts, an alignment of thought and happenstance that seems so glancing, so capricious that to explain it to anyone else would be to render it silly, impotent. We all enjoy and suffer from these feelings, the most private and personal experiences of our lives. Their very uncommunicability means they're rarely portrayed in fiction at all, let alone to this persistent level of success.

      To get there, Knausgaard doesn't try to stab at the moments directly, instead trying to catalog their surroundings and let the figures emerge from the ground, sort of like the whitespace in the margins of our lives. Other readers and critics have noted his complete, reckless honesty—necessary so that the experience is mediated as little as possible. This is fiction's partnership with empathy, rendered in its truest form. Knausgaard can be a skeptic as a person (and especially as a teenager), but he is never so as a writer. Indeed, he only briefly acknowledges towards the start that this is an explicitly written work; for the rest, it is one long stream of consciousness that seems to pour directly from his head to ours, not even interrupted by chapter or scene breaks.

      That's not to say that this is an experimental work; indeed, Knausgaard's writing might be some of the most conventional I've read. Bartlett's translation is superb; while I can't attest to the fidelity, it was wonderful to read and outside of the place names and a few charming idioms, I couldn't have told it was originally written in another language. Even the juvenilia is faithfully rendered in English, with the character at one point getting a "stiffy" from being near a girl.

      I've gone this far without mentioning the P word, but that's because I've never actually read any Proust—a crime, I know. Famous for this sort of all-encompassing personal writing, rich with memory and meaning, he's the closest analogue touted by critics. Instead, the closest writer I know of would be Chris Ware, who also does a wonderful job of both capturing ordinary life and the mix of emotions and resonances right below the surface. Of course, both are also deeply concerned with death, especially Knausgaard.

      That said, the first half of the book is rather warm and wistful, an account of the author's childhood and teenage years. He's incredibly perceptive about the way events at that age are charged with meaning, as if your entire life will be determined by how your date goes on Friday night, or whether you pass the math test on Tuesday. And yet, there are some relationships with adult complexity, even as a child. His uneven relationship with his father, for example, who can be kind and cruel in equal measure. Knausgaard captures well the detente between two individuals who don't understand each other, and must live in a weary co-existence.

      The second half of the book takes place much later, when his father passes away from heart troubles (and no small amount of alcoholism). For the last decade or so, the father had cooped himself up with his own mother (author's grandmother) in a squalid, Hoarders-ish house, which the sons must now thoroughly clean—a physicalized version of them coping with his death, and purging themselves of his legacy. This would seem a bit too on-the-nose if it weren't for Knausgaard's devastating honesty, and utter lack of anything approximating snark. This cleansing (and digressions) is rendered over 100 pages, the sort of micro-detail that would seem grating in any other book, but is necessary to his project and enjoyable in any case. (Given that appeals to me, I guess I should get around to reading Moby Dick one of these days.)

      In all, though, the novel works on the reader in the same way as Knausgaard describes the effects on himself. As the events charge events with meaning by recalling personal details, so too do you recall the resonances in your own life. For myself, it was the portrait of his grandmother as someone whose mind and body had withered away, stubbornly refusing to perish, but a shadow of their former selves. In the case of my grandmother, it means living in an Alzheimer's ward, designed almost as if Bentham's panopticon (but without the unknowable vision), each of the apartments radiating out from a central space so the attendants can at a glance tell where any of the inhabitants are, with a locked door sealing off the entire space. Of course, the code is easy to remember and in any case written on the door frame, but the patients are beyond the perception and memory needed to piece those facts together.

      For Knausgaard, though, coming to terms with his grandmother's decay is tied up with his own father presiding over her decline, refusing the home-help or letting her leave for a retirement community—even breaking his leg at one point in a drunken stupor and not letting her call the ambulance, instead lying on the floor and pissing and shitting and taking his meals in that one spot, surrounded by his detritus until his brother discovers him days later and finally calls for help. It's this portrait of moral, cognitive, physical decay that the author truly hates, hates in the way that we hate those who resemble those parts in ourself that we fear, want to stamp out by stamping out that one person, trying to blot that out entirely from the world. As a way out of that cycle, Knausgaard disassembles himself, comes to terms with his failings and tries to figure out their true origins, finding himself in the ways others must find him, a mix of inborn personality and personal history, yet documented in a personal and internal way that would be impossible to find in any objective examination, instead in the melange of memories and dreams and regrets.