In a Paris Review interview, Jesse Barron observes that Karl Ove Knausgaard’s work is “so aesthetically forceful as to be revolutionary.” What makes it revolutionary is Knausgaard’s goal to write “as close to life as possible” even if it means “breaking” the form of the traditional novel. He said, “I wanted to see how far it was possible to take realism before it would be impossible to read.” I found this fifth volume in the six-volume My Struggle to be impossible to resist. His “realism” has both depth and heft, which allows him to test the boundaries of his consciousness.
Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle: Book Five, translated by Don Bartlett (Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2016), 318.