“He was committing the beginner’s error of inserting his own agenda into the poem, instead of drawing elements out of the poem and then cautiously blowing on them until they started to flame.”

This sentence made me stop to wonder if Knausgaard was telling his readers they shouldn’t come to his novel with an agenda for what it should be like. If so, that’s a good start. I would go further, though, and say that this book is not for those who expect a traditional novel. Characters appear and disappear. Inexplicable things happen. The last chapter is an essay about the nature of death. This unclassifiable book does not feel like a novel. And yet, I love the way it “punches a hole in the wall between the writer and the reader.”

Knausgaard, Karl Ove. The Morning Star: A Novel. Penguin Press, 2021, p. 543.