My Struggle: Book 6

My Struggle: Book 6 by Karl Ove Knausgaard is 1232 pages long. It took me three months to plow through, and not just from its length. Emboldened by the success of the previous five books in his magnum opus, Knausgaard gives himself permission here to be at his most indulgent. He'll write about wrangling his children for 300 pages, for example. He'll meditate on poetry and narrative voice for 200 pages. He'll revisit his wife's mental illness, making their marriage fraught at best and terrifying at worst (they've since divorced). And he'll read Hitler's autobiography and examine it for hundreds of pages and still, frustratingly, never answer the obvious question: Why did he name his book after Hitler's?

Still, Book 6 was a fine read and a fitting cap to the most interesting piece of work I've probably ever read. For me, Knausgaard's appeal comes from his treatment of time, his structure, and his pacing. He's able to keep momentum, whether spending 50 pages on a single afternoon (the effect of reading in real time) or transcending it all and exploring the eternal: God, art, significance. It's brilliant. Jeffrey Eugenides put it best: Knausgaard broke the sound barrier on the autobiographical novel. It's honest and evasive, thrilling and tedious, stupid and brilliant. It's everything. I think Hamlet, Moby-Dick, and My Struggle belong on the top shelf, books that come closest to really getting at the human condition in the imperfect medium of the written word.