My Struggle

June 1, 2015

They're not moody thrillers or sexcapades, but Knausgaard's six-volume autobiographical fiction series has attracted frantic fans worldwide. His excellent writing is at once fluidly absorbing and prodigiously detailed, but not every reader will care for this amount of quotidian self-regard. Here, an 18-year-old Karl Ove, callow, cocky, yet full of self-doubt, heads to a small fishing village in Norway's north to work as a school teacher while laying his grand plans to become a writer. VERDICT Knausgaard captures the coming-of-age experience and our millennial absorption in equal measure for readers who like to sink deeply into daily life.

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