Lit

 Lit by Mary Karr is a lively, impressionistic memoir of addiction and recovery. She bounces around, but most of Lit chronologically covers the two decades or so when Karr met her husband, deepened her alcoholism, had a baby, got sober, got divorced, and found Catholicism. At its best, the memoir captures Karr's interior turmoil in AA meetings and attempting to connect with God. This is true and vulnerable and interesting. Other parts of the memoir are so hazy (college, her husband) as to feel unnecessary when balanced with the rest of the book.

One of the blurbs on the cover of my edition praises Karr for being "unable to write an uninteresting sentence" (or something to that effect). That's an accurate review. A poet, Karr packs more into each clause than most writers. Something about that impulse, coupled with her gritty Texas aphorisms, didn't quite work for me. I found the voice taxing, especially during the vaguer sections of Lit. This criticism is subjective: I can see how many would appreciate Karr's commitment to originality. While my own taste bends toward the simplicity of Rachel Cusk or my boy Karl Ove Knausgaard, I would still recommend Karr's nonfiction, and let the reader decide. 

Ivanhoe

 Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott is a rollicking, fast-paced adventure novel set in the late Twelfth Century. The title character is a Saxon knight having returned from the Crusades back to his native England, a country still reeling from the Norman invasion in 1066. But Ivanhoe isn't really the focus of the novel. It's more about a kaleidoscope of characters that evoke one of my favorite Disney movies: Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, King Richard, and Prince John. They, along with other notable villains and damsels, converge in a variety of conflicts and rescue missions, battles and sporting events. It's an exciting read. Written in 1820, the prose is cumbersome at first: Scott wants to scaffold in a lot of historical context. But once the characters begin making decisions, it flies by. I'm only familiar with a few writers from this century, most notably Dickens and Hardy. Ivanhoe is much more exciting than those two, much more plot-driven. I don't know if it's better--many critics consider it genre fiction compare to Scott's earlier, more serious histories--but it was a joyous, engaging read.

The Third Realm

 The Third Realm by my boy Karl Ove Knausgaard is the third in his Morning Star series. I have not yet located online how many books are expected to be in this series, nor am I sure that Knausgaard himself knows. They are translated from Norwegian and appear every year and a half or so. The first, The Morning Star, was a dazzling read: apocalyptic references, horrific events, preternatural characters, and everyday life twisting into persistent dread. The second, The Wolves of Eternity, was a far-too-long prequel that explored lived experience to the point of mundanity. This book was somewhere in between the two of those. It went back to some of the main characters of the first book--with some good suspense and horror mixed in--though it intentionally never achieved a payoff or answered any of the many questions posed.

Knausgaard's novels are long, strange reads. There truly is no formula. I never really know what to expect with a character, a scene, a meditation. He's never followed conventional structures, and he blends genre frequently. While at times this is frustrating (you'll be almost done with a book and still not have an idea what it's about), ultimately I enjoy the experience. It's like a literary answer to the digital age. He plays with time and attention, stretching our limits of engagement, ignoring a dopamine-dependent audience, wandering around theme and plot and tone and form to the very limits of their expression.