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A review by grayjay
My Struggle, Book 5: Some Rain Must Fall by Karl Ove Knausgård
4.0
At the start we find 20 year old Knausgaard returning from travels abroad. He is excited about moving to Bergen and starting his new life as a writer and student at the Writing Academy. He is as unsure of himself and as eager to impress as ever.
He describes a kind of loneliness born of his eternal shame. There are thoughts that he knows he can't share with anyone, and so he is alone. Although, I don't know how much writing this book and exposing all of these thoughts negates this idea.
He meets a woman named Tonje whom he falls in love with and we're faced with one of the most disturbing scenes of the book, when he cuts himself in the face with a broken bottle because he is drunk and jealous of her and his brother. He continues his mode of laying everything bare in the most humiliating detail. I don't particularly like reading about nihilistic benders and masturbating to art books, but I recognise how bold and courageous Knausgaard is. He is too honest. He goes too far, and it's just far enough.
Knausgaard takes a summer job working at the kind of care facility for those with severe disabilities that existed in the 80s. He describes the difficulty he has with the patients there, both practically and emotionally. He is critical of the institutional system, as a "storage, a warehouse for unwanted people", yet, in typical Knausgaard style, he lays bare his disgust with working there, his humiliation, and in juxtapositioning these thoughts with other selfish thoughts such as his lust over a co-worker, he challenges you to judge him. If he's self-assured enough to point out his own weaknesses so baldly, are they really his weaknesses? Or is this a character he's created to turn a mirror on the reader?
Much of the book is concerned with writer's block and his struggle becoming a writer. Watching his peers make their literary debuts while he struggles to get stories published. He goes back and forth on whether or not to give up entirely.
The novel ends where Book 2 picks up, with him leaving his wide Tonje after a series of marital troubles and moving to Stockholm.
He describes a kind of loneliness born of his eternal shame. There are thoughts that he knows he can't share with anyone, and so he is alone. Although, I don't know how much writing this book and exposing all of these thoughts negates this idea.
He meets a woman named Tonje whom he falls in love with and we're faced with one of the most disturbing scenes of the book, when he cuts himself in the face with a broken bottle because he is drunk and jealous of her and his brother. He continues his mode of laying everything bare in the most humiliating detail. I don't particularly like reading about nihilistic benders and masturbating to art books, but I recognise how bold and courageous Knausgaard is. He is too honest. He goes too far, and it's just far enough.
Knausgaard takes a summer job working at the kind of care facility for those with severe disabilities that existed in the 80s. He describes the difficulty he has with the patients there, both practically and emotionally. He is critical of the institutional system, as a "storage, a warehouse for unwanted people", yet, in typical Knausgaard style, he lays bare his disgust with working there, his humiliation, and in juxtapositioning these thoughts with other selfish thoughts such as his lust over a co-worker, he challenges you to judge him. If he's self-assured enough to point out his own weaknesses so baldly, are they really his weaknesses? Or is this a character he's created to turn a mirror on the reader?
Much of the book is concerned with writer's block and his struggle becoming a writer. Watching his peers make their literary debuts while he struggles to get stories published. He goes back and forth on whether or not to give up entirely.
The novel ends where Book 2 picks up, with him leaving his wide Tonje after a series of marital troubles and moving to Stockholm.