Spring

February 1, 2018
The third book in Knausgaard's quartet of seasonal observations takes a more novelistic (and funereal) turn.In the prior installments in this series, Autumn (2017) and Winter (2018), Knausgaard welcomed his infant daughter to the world through a series of short observational essays about everyday life; becoming a new father was a kind of writing prompt, inspiring him to re-experience life as if through a child's eyes. This volume is a novella that more directly recalls his epic My Struggle series, driven by the same intensely analytical impulses but applying a narrative scrim upon them. As the book opens, Karl Ove is preparing his children for the day and planning to drive the infant girl to visit her mother. Knausgaard delays explaining why mom isn't at home, nor does he immediately explain why he had to pay a visit to Sweden's Child Protection Service the previous summer. There are hints, though, in the themes that Knausgaard keeps returning to as he ferries his child: parental anger, connection, depression, and suicide. As in the My Struggle series, Knausgaard approaches the story with a mix of quotidian depiction (at this point we know more about his bowel movements than those of any writer of consequence since antiquity) and a Proustian attention to the ineffable. The perils a child puts herself through prompts him to contemplate our fragility, how "to be alive is to be always in proximity of death." Because mortality is so much on his mind, the minor domestic calamity in the closing pages (he's low on gas, out of money, and left the baby's bottle behind) takes on a life-or-death tension. If we neglect simple things, how else are we neglectful? And how much harm are we unwittingly bringing upon others, especially those we love most?A somber, philosophical addendum to My Struggle and a fine stand-alone meditation on mortality and fatherhood as well.

Starred review from March 19, 2018
Knausgaard’s latest is a radical, thrilling departure from the first two volumes of his Seasons Quartet. While Autumn and Winter took the form of short essays, this moving novel stylistically resembles his acclaimed My Struggle series. The lead, an avatar for Knausgaard himself, is alone with his four children in Sweden. Readers do not know why their mother is missing, or how long she has been gone. The lyric prose is addressed in the second person to the protagonist’s infant daughter, to read when she grows up. “I am forty-six years old and that is my insight,” he reflects, “that life is made up of events that have to be parried.” There are frequent insinuations of disaster: a filthy house; fears about the baby’s health; a visit to child protective services; blood floating in the toilet. While suspense mounts, the text delves into brief philosophic examinations of Swedish cinema, Russian literature, and the protagonist’s desire to return to a 19th-century lifestyle. As he takes his baby to visit her mother, the action flashes back to the fateful day that changed everything. This is a remarkably honest take on the strange linkages between love, loss, laughter, and self-destruction, a perfect distillation of Knausgaard’s unique gifts.

March 15, 2018
This third installment in Knausgaard's seasonal cycle departs from the encyclopedic style of its predecessors, Autumn (2017) and Winter (2018). Instead, Knausgaard opts for more straightforward narrative, picking up after the birth of his daughter, and after his separation from her mother. In the first scenes, Karl Ove struggles to get the older children ready for school while managing to sneak away to the porch for coffee and a cigarette before diving back into the busyness of everyday life. As the day unwinds, Karl Ove prepares for a drive to visit his estranged wife, and this occasions an extended reflection on happier times, including a vacation on F�r�, an island off the coast of Sweden, famous for its rauks, columns of eroded stone left standing on sandy beaches. At times, Knausgaard slips into philosophizing on free will, the self, and the nature of personality, musings that acquire urgency when Knausgaard reveals why he's written all this, telling his newborn daughter: I guess it was mostly for my sake that I did it, as a way of preparing myself. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

April 15, 2018

In this third book in an autobiographical series (though this one is billed as a novel), Norwegian author Knausgaard continues the narrative started in the previous volumes, Autumn and Winter. On the surface, it is a paean to the ongoing development, since conception, of the author's now three-month-old daughter. On a deeper level, it represents a kind of exegesis of the author's life with his wife and four children as he struggles with being the sole caregiver for his children. His wife, one learns, is currently incapacitated by mental illness. As he contemplates day-to-day challenges, the author's introspections, seemingly banal, take on a greater significance. This is revealed as he muses on the dark events of the previous summer when his wife was pregnant with their fourth child and sought to end her own life. Through the meticulous reappraisal of these events, the work accomplishes a transformation from a mere mundane description of tragedy to a complex contemplation of self and relationships. VERDICT This severe and direct analysis of domestic life creates a compelling tension between recovery from traumatic events and a resigned acceptance of present truths; recommended for fans of domestic drama and fine writing. [See Prepub Alert, 11/12/17.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2018

In this third in an autobiographical quartet, Knausgaard faces explaining to his newborn daughter why, after incidents during her mother's pregnancy, he must attend appointments with child services for her safety. Brutally honest and detailed, like Knausgaard's monumental "My Struggle" series.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.